


Adjustment

by autotunedd



Series: Inje [2]
Category: Big Bang (Band), GTOP (Band)
Genre: M/M, this first half was an excuse to write XXX
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-06-15 07:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15408459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autotunedd/pseuds/autotunedd
Summary: Jiyong and Seunghyun settle in at Inje & Jiyong's parents visit for his birthday.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inje was a request fill, but I kind of wanted to extend it. So now it's a series.

 

There are too many options. The bell above the door of the convenience store chimes behind him as someone enters and he winces. He has been in here too long. The long rows of samgak stare him in the face, but he can’t remember what Seunghyun asked for. He came here specifically to buy this thing, because Seunghyun had a vocal craving the second he woke up, and now he might go home empty handed. Or the opposite. He brings his basket up to the shelf and carefully knocks in two of each flavour. They look home-made, like everything else in the store. He has been in here a thousand times in the two and a half months they’ve been living here and he has only shared the store with another person on maybe ten of those occasions. He knew Inje wasn’t a metropolis, but every time he pushes open the glass doors and says hello to the old man behind the counter, he is surprised to find himself otherwise alone. A TV in the upper corner is the only sound he ever hears.  
  
He meanders around the back rows, looking for anything else he might want over the next two days—too disorganised to head to the market most weeks for real groceries. They have been living off convenience store food. Seunghyun paid for a small hothouse to be put up near the house and he has been gardening for the last three weeks, or what to Jiyong looks like playing with dirt, because he hasn’t grown an edible thing yet. He has half a mind to go to the market and beg some ajumma’s to come and get him through the worst of it. Seunghyun says it takes time. It’s a work in progress.  
  
Jiyong knocks a few more things into the basket and heads to the counter when the other customer leaves. His hair has grown out and he’s gained two kilos since moving. Nobody has recognised him yet, but he’s still careful. He tries to avoid people if he can help it. When they need food, they usually go separately, one or the other, with a mask and a hat on. It is harder for Seunghyun to mask his voice, so he is usually the one to go. He changes the way he walks and the way he talks. In a perverse way, it’s kind of fun. He play-acts. He pretends to be somebody else. With his tattoos covered and different clothing on, he seems to get away with it. Once or twice he has caught someone staring, but they ultimately come to nothing, his observers deciding there is no chance it can actually be him.  
  
Things have been good since the move. After their first night in the new house, he put his phone in a kitchen drawer and he hasn’t opened it since. He gave the landline number to his parents and to friends, and that is the only contact he has had with the outside world. Seunghyun reads the news and passes anything of interest to him, conspicuously silent on things that might upset him. He knows Seunghyun read every article about their joint departure from YGE and the rumours that must have followed, but he said nothing about it. The agreement was that they would release similar statements about wanting to take a break. Seunghyun’s statement directly referenced his own; that _his_ departure is what motivated Seunghyun to take the break he long wanted. Seunghyun told his family and friends that he was moving to Jeju without giving anyone his address, and that’s been working for him so far. He talks to friends over the phone and goes to Seoul now and then, overnight or for a weekend, but he always comes home tired and relieved to crawl back into their bed. So, they are adjusting. For the most part, what Jiyong misses most are the city lights at night, but there is beauty in darkness too. It’s just different.  
  
He pays for his groceries and something catches his eye. Beneath the counter and to the side are a series of pictures. They are new. Hand painted. Small canvases and drawings on wood. Some of them are incredibly nice, others amateurish. Each has a small price in its corner.  
  
‘What are these?’  
  
The old man behind the counter owns the store with his wife. Jiyong talks to him sometimes about mundane things. He tries to buy more than he needs to, to help them out. They’re nice people and they don’t get a lot of business here in the boondocks. They must be in their seventies, but don’t look it.  
  
‘People in the area ask me to sell things for them,’ the man says. ‘If I have the space, I do it’.  
  
‘Who painted these?’  
  
‘Mrs Lee,’ he says, ‘from up there’. He points to a side-road up the street. It leads, eventually, to his own house. Where he and Seunghyun live is isolated but they still have neighbours. The closest is 1km away. ‘She has a craft table at the market’.  
  
‘Oh, I know’.  
  
He takes his groceries off the counter. He knows that lady. He has been to the market six or seven times since they arrived, and she has always been nice to him. He always stops at her corner to buy supplies from her—paints and anything else he can use. They aren’t good quality but they are good enough for the paintings he does at home. He started the week they moved in and hasn’t stopped. It relaxes him. He has already filled a spare room with crowded canvases. Two or three, Seunghyun has hung in the house. Still, she wasn’t at the market the last two times he went.  
  
‘She hasn’t been at the market lately’.  
  
The old man leans over, elbows resting on the counter.  
  
‘She’s sick. Her son brought these paintings to me and asked me to sell them. They’re having some difficulties’. He taps a container beside the cash register. ‘You can donate here. Don’t ask me what the money will go towards, because that I don’t know,’ he says, wiping his hands of the whole thing. ‘I don’t ask and they don’t tell me’.  
  
Jiyong frowns and shoves some bills in the container. He points to the paintings by his feet.  
  
‘Can anyone do this?’  
  
‘For a small fee,’ the man says. ‘And as long as I have the space. What do you do?’  
  
‘I like to paint,’ Jiyong shrugs.  
  
‘When I sell some of these, bring me something. I can put it down below’.

  
  
  
  
* * *

 

 

 

He pulls the mask down and sniffs involuntarily. The stench of paint makes his nostrils twitch. He steps back from the canvas and tilts his head this way and that. Is it finished? He doesn’t know. If he has to ask, it probably isn’t. He has been adding things to the canvas for days, unsatisfied. Seunghyun knocks on the door frame behind him.  
  
‘It looks good’.  
  
Jiyong turns, and screws up his mouth.  
  
‘I don’t know. I don’t really know what I’m doing’.  
  
He scratches his collarbone with the handle of the brush and turns back to the colourful disarray. He isn’t out here drawing photorealistic landscapes, but he doesn’t want to be. He just likes to paint. Most of them turn out similar, colours against colours. Erratic. A little off. It’s what he feels like doing every time he dips a brush in paint. Sometimes he paints daisies. He turns back to Seunghyun.  
  
‘What are you doing?’  
  
‘I’m going to the store. I need cigarettes’.  
  
‘Can you get me some?’  
  
Seunghyun nods and turns but Jiyong calls him back. He hasn’t seen Seunghyun since this-morning. He has been digging around in the hothouse trying to will something to grow. Soon, Jiyong expects he’ll start sleeping out there. He’ll read the plants bedtime stories and play music to help their development. He already caught him singing out there.  
  
‘My dad called earlier’.  
  
‘Oh?’  
  
‘My parents want to visit for my birthday next month. They want to stay here in the house. I said it would be okay’.  
  
Seunghyun looks surprised but he shrugs.  
  
‘Okay. We’re having your birthday here then?’  
  
‘I guess so. You didn’t have anything planned?’  
  
‘Not yet’.  
  
Jiyong sighs and puffs his cheeks out. He loves his parents, but his relationship with them has definitely changed since he told them about Seunghyun. It isn’t bad, just different. Neither of them have seen him since he travelled down to Samcheok to come out to his dad, and that was a trial. He had to explain to his father the difference between gay and bisexual, and how no— settling with a man doesn’t flip the switch to gay. There were details he didn’t have to give to his mother. Ultimately, he didn’t have to flee in the middle of a vicious fight, but it was uncomfortable and his father didn’t know how to take it. He still doesn’t. He’s doing his best. They both are. Jiyong was surprised to get the call this-morning. More so when his father suggested they stay in the house and not at a hotel.  
  
‘Great,’ he whistles. ‘It’s all settled. My parents are going to see us together for the first time and they’ve arranged it so they can’t leave if things get uncomfortable. What could go wrong?’  
  
Seunghyun smiles and folds his arms.  
  
‘Do you think it will be uncomfortable?’  
  
‘Probably’.  
  
‘How was your dad?’  
  
Jiyong looks at a smaller canvas on the floor. It is a wandering mess of different reds. He painted it when he was frustrated. It made him feel better to do it.  
  
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me as much as he used to. He called and talked about my birthday, asked about the house, and that was it. He hung up. We used to talk for ages on the phone. I kind of miss it. It makes me sad’.  
  
‘What’s the problem?’ Seunghyun asks. ‘You think he’s uncomfortable with you? With us?’  
  
‘Not exactly. I think he’s just confused. Maybe he thinks I’m a different person than I used to be? And he doesn’t know how to talk to me anymore?’  
  
Seunghyun frowns sympathetically.  
  
‘Maybe it will be good for him to come and stay, then. You can spend some time together and he can get used to us. We’re so cute?’  
  
Jiyong groans.  
  
‘This will be a disaster’.  
  
‘No. He’ll love me,’ Seunghyun answers. ‘Your mom always liked me’.  
  
‘Yeah. As like— a weird relative that came over on holidays’.  
  
Seunghyun’s mouth drops and Jiyong steps forward, placing a hand on his chest, but Seunghyun brushes him off in mock disdain.  
  
‘A family full of assholes!’  
  
He winks, turns and heads out the door with a hand thrown out in goodbye.  
  
'I've got to go before the store shuts'.  
  
Jiyong yells after him.  
  
‘Don’t forget my cigarettes!’

  
  
  
  
  
* * *

 

 

 

Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six. The actress on screen speaks and Jiyong waits for her to stop. He lost interest in the film thirty minutes ago and has spent the time counting instead, the seconds in each bout of silence. Seunghyun is watching the film, rapt, so he is obligated, as his fiancé, to feign interest as well.   
  
It isn’t that the film itself is bad, he’s just not in the mood. He can't concentrate for three full hours on an esoteric French film that came out five decades ago. For days, he has been restless and he doesn’t know why. It came on slowly as a vague feeling one day--- a sense that he was forgetting something negative in the back of his mind. A little twinge of anxiety. Then it grew and ballooned over the following days into a state of pure dissatisfaction. Nothing feels right. Nothing feels good. He isn’t enjoying the things he should. He is just tense. _Restless._    
  
He worries it might mean something. That it might have implications for his life here in Inje. He doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to sabotage himself into thinking he was better off in Seoul. He forces himself to dwell on the past. He thinks back on dark days and sleepless nights. He thinks about the unceasing stress of the last few years. He thinks about sitting in the emergency staircase of YGE so he could close his eyes for five minutes. He thinks about all the times Seunghyun was the only good part of his day. On one bad bender, he stood on a balcony one night alone and stepped onto the railing so the top came only to his groin. One wrong move and he could have gone over, but why else was he doing it? For thirty fitful seconds, he was so exhausted and stressed, he took the chance. He doesn’t ever want to live like that again. So much of his life has been beautiful and he wouldn’t take the last fifteen years back for anything. Regardless, it was wearing him thin towards the end. He knows. He needs this break. So why, now--- three months into it, is he suddenly bouncing off the walls?  
  
 ‘Are you trying to take back my proposal?’  
  
 He jolts, surprised by Seunghyun’s voice. At first, he doesn’t understand what he means, then he realises he’s been holding Seunghyun’s hand, twisting the ring on his finger round and around, over and over. Seunghyun’s ring is similar to his own, but with a different inscription. _Peace._ It is less obvious than Seunghyun’s engraving, but it means something to him. _Peaceminusone_ was his brand for so long. It was representative of his loneliness in times of stress. He and Seunghyun were together through it all and happy, but the world outside them was becoming a dark place. The industry and the life it necessitated was lonely. He felt it to his core. It was hard to see a thousand faces and only recognise one. To walk into a crowded room and feel so detached, it physically propelled him back out of it. For a while there, Seunghyun was it. He was the only person he trusted. Until those last years, he didn’t know you could be in love and miserably lonely at the same time. It was rough and confusing. So, peace means something to him. Peace is that loneliness gone. Done. Buried. Because of Seunghyun, he has peace. Even now, with his restlessness.  
  
‘Sorry’.  
  
He returns Seunghyun’s hand to him.   
  
‘You don’t like the movie?’   
  
‘No, I’m watching it. It’s good’.   
  
Seunghyun turns back to the television and Jiyong readjusts his ass on the couch. He stretches his legs to get the blood back into them. They are both laying on the couch in the same direction, with Seunghyun as the little spoon. It is nice to hold him. He buries his nose in Seunghyun’s hair and his eyes drift to a canvas on the wall to the right of it. He painted it a few weeks ago. Seunghyun hung it up when he was at the market. He surprised him. He took down an expensive painting they both liked and replaced it with this ambiguous homemade thing. It looks like a daisy almost, but blue. More collapsed. He doesn’t know what it is. It was just how he felt at the time.   
  
Seunghyun keeps doing that. He keeps doing nice things—meaningful things that make Jiyong’s heart ache from love, and he hasn’t done anything in return. He doesn’t know how Seunghyun can be so consistently selfless or how the opportunities arise so frequently. All he has done for him in return is track down a rare bottle of wine he wanted. He left it in the wine cellar with a bow on it. Seunghyun was grateful, but Jiyong doesn’t want to be the guy who throws money at things. He doesn’t want to express his love that way. He wants to be a romantic husband. A romantic fiancé. He _is_ romantic. He doesn’t know why he feels so upstaged since being here. Maybe he simply owes Seunghyun too much for packing his life up so they could be together.  
  
For the last few weeks, Seunghyun has been talking about getting a job and Jiyong can support him in that, if nothing else. Curating. Dealing. Something. So many positions merged together in his mind, but he will support him in any of them. He can repay him with love and encouragement. If Seunghyun wants to do something in that field, he will be champion it. Whatever it takes. He wants Seunghyun to be happy. He wants his life here to be fulfilling in every way—not just through their relationship. They can’t live here together and have a beautiful life without also feeding their passions and exploring their interests. They have sustained their relationship over the years by having the freedom to do that. Being here shouldn’t change that.    
  
On the screen, a woman makes a passionate declaration of love, her final words a poignant _je t'aime._  
  
Jiyong kisses Seunghyun’s hair and repeats it.   
  
‘Je t’aime’.  
  
Seunghyun scoffs quietly.   
  
‘Merci’.   
  
He tightens his grip around Seunghyun’s waist and closes his eyes. A character in the film ends a monologue and Jiyong begins counting silence again. One, two, three, four.

 

  
  
  
  
* * *

 

 

 

He folds the paper for the twentieth time, the flawed shape in his hands now small and rigid. It doesn’t bend the way he hopes. Holding it in the palm of his hand, he thinks it looks more like a pig than a frog. He buries his face in the mattress and stretches out on the bed. He is still restless, so desperate to expend his nervous energy, he has spent the last hour doing origami on the bed. He throws the failed frog onto a pile of other deformed paper animals on the floor. He has created an amorphous stack of colourful gremlins. Now, he has run out of paper.  
  
Seunghyun is drifting around downstairs, on the phone. He has been on the phone all day, talking to God knows who about God knows what. It has left him more than usually alone. Fine on any other day, or during any other week but this one. This week, he recurringly wonders if he made a mistake--- if this sudden flurry of energy is the natural result of living quietly. He wants to talk about it, but he’s afraid of digging too deeply. He doesn’t want to psychoanalyse himself and decide he misses the debilitating stress of six months ago. He is enjoying Inje— _savouring_ it. He is just tense and he doesn’t know why.  
  
Seunghyun emerges from the bowels of the house at long last and saunters into the room with a satisfied look on his face. Seeing his pathetic posture on the bed, Seunghyun shoots him a pitying look and Jiyong sticks his tongue out, annoyed. He feels like a child bouncing off the walls. He doesn’t want Seunghyun to feel like a parent, herding him around, finding things for him to do. Still---  
  
‘Still restless?’  
  
_‘Yes’_.  
  
‘Still looking for a thrill?’  
  
Jiyong perks his head up now, wondering what the conclusion to this might be. At this point, he’ll take any suggestions. Bungee jumping? Rafting? Paddling in the river? He told Seunghyun over breakfast _a thrill_ was what was missing. He answers tentatively.  
  
‘Yes?’  
  
Seunghyun raises his eyebrows in an unexpected sultry kind of way, then leaves the room entirely. Jiyong groans, frustrated. He buries his face in the mattress a second time. He holds his breath for twenty seconds before he lifts his head again to breathe.  
  
Seunghyun re-enters the room with a notepad and a marker, sitting in the chair opposite the bed. He opens his mouth to say something, but his phone rings somewhere in the house and he raises a finger to his ear. He has a Bluetooth headset. Jiyong rolls his eyes at yet another interminable conversation but watches him anyway. He looks good today. Relaxed and healthy, with a self-satisfied vibe that he hasn’t explained yet. His hair is washed and brushed, but un-styled and it falls across his head in a beautiful way. Jiyong wants to run his fingers through it and unbutton his shirt down to the middle. Seunghyun crosses his legs and rests the pad on one knee, writing something in dark marker. Jiyong lifts his head to read it when Seunghyun turns it to face him.  
  
TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES  
  
Jiyong’s mouth opens in utter amazement. He shakes his head in disbelief. Take his clothes off? While Seunghyun is on the phone? On what sounds heavily like a professional business call? He shakes his head in the negative, and Seunghyun turns to a fresh page, writing again—all the while, talking on the phone in a perfectly natural, measured voice.  
  
DO IT  
  
Jiyong laughs silently at the sheer insanity and the look on Seunghyun’s face that is both imploring and authoritative. He isn’t joking. These notepad requests in thick marker are legitimate. He wants him to take his clothes off. Here and now, while he talks about stocks and acquisitions. Seunghyun taps the notepad, authoritative and calm. His voice remains unchanged, professional but amiable and that alone makes Jiyong feel some kind of way. He feels pride in Seunghyun’s changing confidence and the way he is speaking unselfconsciously to whoever is on the phone. His expression though is domineering. So much so, that Jiyong finds himself with both feet on the floor. Seunghyun writes again.  
  
SLOW  
  
Jiyong barely restrains a laugh, this is such an insane moment in their lives. This is some _Basic Instinct_ shit, but he slinks to the end of the bed anyway, a few feet from Seunghyun’s chair and follows his written instructions. He slowly pulls his sweater over his head, maintaining eye contact. He makes a show of it. Next, he lifts his shirt--- extra slow. He lifts it above his belly button, taking a moment to run his fingers over his stomach. It’s an innocuous touch, but it’s suggestive and Seunghyun’s eyes follow the motion. He watches rapt as Jiyong pulls the shirt over his head and throws it to the side—now shirtless in front of him. His pants follow a similar route. It’s hard to take your pants off in a sexy way, but they’ve known each other a long time and Jiyong knows how to tease. Every movement is calculated until he is standing there in his briefs and nothing else.  
  
Seunghyun nods for those to go too, so Jiyong smiles and turns around. He faces away from him and slips his fingers beneath the band, bending slowly to take them off until he is at 90 degrees and his bare ass is all Seunghyun can see. He kicks the briefs aside and stands upright again, covering his dick with his hand before turning around. Seunghyun has an appreciative, hungry look on his face and Jiyong is amazed by the tone in his voice and how carefully he is regulating it. Not for one second has he lost concentration on his call. Seunghyun pauses to listen to the other person speak and he responds exactly the way he should. Jiyong wonders if this is a good result or not—if it’s better to be so irresistible that Seunghyun can’t focus, or if sabotaging a business call is actually the wrong result. Still, this is Seunghyun’s game, not his.  
  
HAND  
  
Jiyong smirks and removes his hand. He uncovers his dick and takes a relaxed stance, his weight on one leg. Seunghyun eyes him up and down and unconsciously nods in approval. He sighs. Jiyong can see his chest move, but his voice remains the same. It is impressive. Part of him wants to know the endgame here. He wants to know how calm Seunghyun can remain—but he also knows this call has to end soon, otherwise why would Seunghyun ask him to do this.  
  
COME HERE  
  
Jiyong reads the notepad and smiles faintly at the craziness of this. Seunghyun drops the pad on the table and gestures with his hand, _come hither_. It’s assertive and Jiyong moves instinctively towards him, like he’s being pulled by an unseen thread. He stops within arms-reach of him and Seunghyun responds. He tilts his head appraisingly and runs a hand over his body. Almost. Seunghyun hovers an inch or two above the skin, exploring his bare stomach and waist, his hip and his thighs, all without ever touching him. It feels intimate and nice, despite the ongoing conversation that Jiyong is already beginning to tune out.  
  
Seunghyun touches him. He curls his fingers around his cock and Jiyong almost stutters at the sudden contact. He sweeps light fingertips up the shaft before gripping tight. Holding him. With his free hand, Seunghyun reaches behind him. Finds something. Jiyong reacts moments later to the cold. Just enough lube to make it work without making an obvious sound. And like that, Seunghyun wordlessly touches him. He jerks him off—all the while talking on the phone, never skipping a beat. Careful all the while to not make a sound, the unspoken challenge for Jiyong not to make one either.  
  
Jiyong’s head drops back. He stares at the ceiling and takes a measured breath. He sways minutely. Seunghyun’s touch is nice and firm and it’s so quickly perfect because they know each other so well. Seunghyun knows the right way to touch him and the fastest way to make him hard. He knows the quickest way to make him cum. He has power. They both do. This is different though. He isn’t trying to be fast or slow. They are somewhere in between. Seunghyun adds a second hand and a heavy breath passes Jiyong’s lips before he locks them tight. Seunghyun holds his dick with one hand and palms the head with the other. It’s almost painful, in a good way. He squirms.  
  
He brings his head back and finds Seunghyun looking at him—not at his dick, but at his face. Their eyes meet and from that point, Jiyong can’t look away. Seunghyun’s expression isn’t teasing, it is confident and imposing. He is silent for a time as the person on the phone speaks to him through his ear--- and Jiyong wants to _touch_ him. He wants to grab his bicep or his shoulder. Something. But he doesn’t, because he gets the feeling Seunghyun doesn’t want that. So Jiyong rests his hands behind his neck with his elbows to his ears, like he can shield himself and protect himself from this overwhelming _thing_. Seunghyun’s unexpected attitude, and the inability to make a sound--- they excite him. He maintains eye contact but he feels and sees himself come to life in Seunghyun’s hand. He feels the warmth pool. He feels himself swell and ache.  
  
Seunghyun jerks him off and the silence of it is intoxicating. It is so unlike anything they have done before. To be standing naked in the middle of a room while someone touches him is enough, but for Seunghyun to be seated fully clothed, and in the middle of a call is madness.  
  
On some level, he wants to put a stop to it because it’s irresponsible—but Seunghyun squeezes his dick and his knees weaken and he starts moving his hips in response to meet him. To feel more. Jiyong breaks eye contact and turns his head. The balcony door is open. The blinds are pulled aside. A faint breeze moves in through the window and his cock twitches in Seunghyun’s hands. This is dangerous on multiple levels, and he likes it. He imagines someone walking through the woods and stumbling upon their house—looking up into the second story window, and there he’ll be. Naked, pushing himself into someone’s hand. He turns back to Seunghyun and finds himself changing his reactions as if performing for a third party and for Seunghyun too. He rocks into Seunghyun’s hand with real need.  
  
Seunghyun tightens his grip, almost too tight. Making a ring with his fingers, he pulls slowly up the shaft and Jiyong writhes. His whole body responds to Seunghyun’s touch. His dick is flushed and hard. Seunghyun pulls it down to an almost painful angle before letting go, his cock springing back uncomfortably. Seunghyun says something Jiyong doesn’t catch to the person on the phone, then he bends slightly and turns his head to lick the underside of his cock, dragging his tongue slowly up the shaft and around the head.  
  
Jiyong’s legs tremble and Seunghyun pulls away. He can’t do more without making a sound. It is agonising. Jiyong grimaces, kneading the back of his own neck with his fingers. He is pent up now with no release. But, maybe not. Seunghyun gestures toward the bed so Jiyong does as he’s told. He sits on the end and waits for Seunghyun to finish writing his next note.  
  
ON THE BED. ON YOUR BACK.  
  
Jiyong closes his eyes for a moment in sheer anticipation for whatever comes next. He crawls up the bed and lays on his back, pulling his hair away from his neck. At the bottom of the bed, Seunghyun toes off his shoes and socks and follows him—fully dressed. It is a turn on to watch him, on his hands and knees, in a dress shirt with the top button undone. Something in it feels forbidden, or just different and new maybe.  
  
Seunghyun, still talking on the phone, maintaining a perfectly normal pace and tone, meets him on the bed and sits back on his heels. He spreads his legs a little to distribute his weight better. Jiyong relishes the sight, even clothed. It feels like a fantasy he always meant to have but never got around to.  
  
Seunghyun pulls him down by the legs until the backs of Jiyong’s thighs are resting over his, like they would be if they were fucking. They are in a normal enough position but instead of preparing to fuck, Seunghyun touches him again. He grabs his cock and gives him a hand job even better than the one standing up— one that is so fucking good and sudden and relentless, Jiyong twists on the mattress and bites his own arm not to make a noise. Practically in Seunghyun’s lap, his hips buck and turn. He he clenches his fists in frustration. He doesn’t know what to do when he cums; how he’ll manage not to make a sound.  
  
It doesn’t take long until he’s almost there. His thighs tremble and he grabs the inside of his own thigh, so desperate to do something—to make it last longer, or happen faster, he doesn’t know. But Seunghyun senses it too and releases him.  
  
Jiyong covers his face with his hands in frustration. He wants to moan and grumble and finish himself off, but Seunghyun backs off the bed entirely and when he stands, Jiyong follows him with his eyes. He can see Seunghyun’s dick through his pants. He’s hard. And still--- he is talking on the phone. He hasn’t made the slightest telling sound. It is unbelievable. He bends over the desk and writes something on the pad, then holds it up for him to see.  
  
QUIET  
  
Jiyong nods and Seunghyun returns to the bed. He sees the tiny bottle in Seunghyun’s hand and his heart pounds, anticipating the conclusion of this insane experiment. Seunghyun returns to his same position--- resting back on his ankles with his knees apart for balance. He brings himself right up to Jiyong’s ass and Jiyong props himself up on his elbows, eyes wide.    
  
Seunghyun undoes his belt.  
  
They make eye contact and the domineering look on Seunghyun’s face is otherworldly. He’s going to fuck me, Jiyong thinks. While he sits there on the phone, having a normal conversation with someone. The thought of it alone makes his cock twitch and Seunghyun smiles, seeing it. He undoes the buttons of his trousers and pulls them down over his thighs, shifting his weight so he can get them under his knees. He leaves them around his ankles behind him and Jiyong hates the way he aches for looking at it—hates how much he loves that he is naked and Seunghyun isn’t. He marvels at Seunghyun’s cock beneath his dress shirt, flushed and hard against his stomach.  
  
Seunghyun reintroduces the lube and Jiyong watches him. He spreads his legs wider to accommodate him and holds his cock against his stomach. He watches Seunghyun’s face. He watches the way he concentrates, one long beautiful finger sliding past the ring of muscle, down to the second joint. Jiyong grimaces at the flicker of pain, more tension than anything, but he savours it. He focuses on it. He dwells on the feeling of Seunghyun inside him. Any part of him feels good. He watches the way Seunghyun’s lips part when he draws his finger in and out with little motions, coaxing and massaging until the tension is gone and he can introduce a second. Jiyong drops his head when Seunghyun’s fingers crook inside him. He closes his eyes and his hips move involuntarily. His cock twitches again and he shakes his head, amazed by his own desperation. That half-tickle, half-pleasure blooms inside him in small waves.  
  
Seunghyun laughs suddenly in response to something said on the phone, that fake-laugh he does when he’s trying to make someone feel comfortable and Jiyong watches him for a moment, so dazzled and in love with him, the feeling shocks him. His heart swells because they have never done this before. This was never a possibility. He is in love because they have been together for ten years and can still have these moments. They can still discover new things together. He can still be _surprised._ And maybe that was the problem--- maybe he has spent the past week worrying that they will stagnate without external drama's to battle together; trying pre-emptively to imagine future problems. He knows now, he doesn't have to worry.  
  
Seunghyun withdraws his fingers and Jiyong misses them, but he is content to watch Seunghyun stroke himself with enough lube to get the job done and no more. His cock is so pink and beautiful, Jiyong wants to drag him closer and wrap his lips around it. He wants to kiss the head and swallow him down. He wants to blow him and make him sweat. He wants to make him _slip_. He wants his conversation to stutter.  
  
Seunghyun repositions himself and then he’s ready. He laughs on the phone and says sycophantic things that seem to run together in Jiyong’s mind and then, when Seunghyun is silent, when the person on the phone talks in his stead—he eases in. Jiyong zeroes in on the stretch and the familiar heat and that one brief flicker of pain and uncomfortable fullness before he begins to relax. When Seunghyun is fully inside him, he waits. A few more conversational points pass his lips before he moves. He is gentle at first, and slow. Jiyong feels the warmth slowly build and radiate through his body. It feels amazing. It always does, but this is new and dangerous and the thrill of it intensifies every sensation. Knowing he can’t make a sound makes him desperate to be loud. He wants to groan in appreciation. He wants to breathe properly instead of forcing out small unsatisfying huffs. He wants Seunghyun to make noise. He wants Seunghyun to be rough with him and demanding. Still, what this is—is bliss.  
  
Seunghyun doesn’t touch his cock and Jiyong doesn’t either because he doesn’t have to. He is so turned on, there is no moment where he begins to go soft. Seunghyun fills him perfectly and every careful, quiet thrust hits him in the right spot. It is torture for how satisfying every second of it is. For a few minutes, Seunghyun fucks him at the same pace and it is infuriating how calm he remains. There isn’t a trace of breathiness in his conversation. There is nothing at all. Jiyong can hear in the quiet lulls, the faint tinny sound of someone speaking and he wonders if he can hear _them_ —how they can’t hear him in return; can’t hear his silent breaths or the quiet sound of skin slapping against skin because there are _some_ noises still. The unmistakable sound of fucking is still there if he concentrates. If he listens for it. It turns him on--  it’s something he can’t usually hear, but in the gaps when Seunghyun is silent, he can hear it all, and it’s so intimate and exposing.  
  
Seunghyun gets his sweet spot and Jiyong reacts. He tightens around him and Seunghyun’s mouth changes shape but he lets out a silent breath and manages to stay quiet. It changes something though. It puts the game on pause. Seunghyun raises a finger to his ear-- _‘I’m sorry about this, can I put you on hold for one minute? There’s someone at the door. I’ll be right back’._  
  
And then, he does something. Hits something on his earpiece. He pauses for a moment. Still. Waiting. Checking. Then he sinks down and kisses him, and Jiyong’s lips part instinctively to meet him. It is such an urgent and needy kiss, it makes him shake.  
  
‘They’re on hold,’ Seunghyun whispers urgently, planting small kisses along his jaw.  
  
Jiyong reacts instantly. He tightens his legs around Seunghyun’s waist and Seunghyun fucks him harder, faster—enough to make noise. Suddenly, their heavy breaths fill the air and Jiyong kisses every part of Seunghyun he can reach. He rocks into him. He moves against him. He digs his fingers into Seunghyun’s hip and the side of his thigh and begs him to fuck him harder. It has all been too slow and too careful. He needs rough now. He needs it to hurt a little. When Seunghyun fucks him hard, every jolt makes pleasure spark in his cock and in the base of his brain.  
  
Seunghyun pulls back. Jiyong lets him reposition his body the way he wants it. Seunghyun picks up his left leg and moves it to the right. He rolls him onto his side without ever pulling out, and the movement kind of drags and pulls uncomfortably inside him, but Jiyong relishes it. On his back mostly, with his legs to the side, one on top of the other, Seunghyun can fuck him from a new angle and it’s beautiful and it’s rough because that’s what he asks for.  
  
‘Harder’.  
  
Seunghyun does as he asks and Jiyong hums into the mattress. His cock throbs between his legs, untouched. He is so close already, but he doesn’t want this to end. He wants to stay in this insane situation forever, it is so gratifying to him, but Seunghyun surprises him. He changes the game.  
  
In this new position, with half his ass exposed, Seunghyun slaps him unexpectedly. He _smacks_ him, and Jiyong freezes from sheer surprise. But an instant afterwards, he feels something in his cock he doesn’t expect and they make eye contact. Seunghyun looks hesitant, like he has done something wrong but Jiyong bites his lip and asks him to do it again.  
  
Seunghyun slaps his ass and Jiyong feels it in his dick. It does something to him—and maybe they’ve done it before, in smaller ways, years ago when they were younger, but they’ve never _really_ done it. It surprises him mow much he likes it, instantly, and how differently he wants it.  
  
‘Harder’.  
  
Seunghyun bites his own lip now and his arm swings further back before he slaps him and this time it’s so hard, Jiyong’s whole body moves in reaction to it. It feels amazing. The residual sting numbs him and the contrast between that and his aching cock is something so new, he wants to drown in it.  
  
‘Harder. Hit me harder’.  
  
Seunghyun doesn’t hesitate. He trusts him. He hits him harder again and Jiyong makes a sound this time, one pulled from his body by the shock of it. His legs shake and he reaches for Seunghyun’s other hand, settling for his wrist. He latches onto him.  
  
‘Hard as you can’.  
  
Seunghyun hesitates this time but does what he asks. Jiyong lets go of him and braces himself. He clutches the sheets below him and when Seunghyun hits him this time, it _hurts._ He cries out in real pain and buries his face in the mattress, but two seconds later he makes a different sound in satisfaction because it feels so good after the fact. It is addictive. The sting intoxicates him. He wonders why they’ve never done it before—but maybe this is just what he likes now. What he needs here in the middle of nowhere, living a quiet life. Maybe this is a way to expend his restless energies and to fulfil that subtle craving; the small part of him that misses stress and pain.  
  
Seunghyun runs gentle fingers over his red cheek, where he hit him, and Jiyong winces—but not for long. He gives Seunghyun the go-ahead to keep moving, to _fuck_ him, and it takes so little time, he is surprised by how quickly he cums.  
  
Seunghyun fucks him for only twenty more seconds, then Jiyong is swatting at him, desperate to get back onto his back. Seunghyun swings his leg back over. Three more thrusts and he’s done. It tears through him. Jiyong feels his orgasm come on suddenly and it is intense. It mingles with the pain in his ass and he is loud. He doesn’t care that the balcony doors are open, the sound is pulled from him and he cums with a vocal groan. He digs his fingernails into Seunghyun’s thighs so hard that he leaves crescent imprints—so hard that Seunghyun winces.  
  
His head literally spins, but before his cock has even finished twitching, Seunghyun has a hand flat over his mouth and he is talking again. The phone call resumed. His voice calm. Measured. Controlled. _‘I’m back. I’m sorry about the interruption’._ And Jiyong doesn’t know how he _does_ that, how he isn’t out of breath—or how he holds it back. He pushes Seunghyun’s hand off his mouth in irritation. Still, he tries not to make a sound.  
  
He tries to stifle his heaving breathing while tremors still run through his legs. It doesn’t help that Seunghyun hasn’t cum yet. He isn’t finished. He fucks him at that same unbearable pace, steady and controlled. For another two minutes, Seunghyun fucks him and it becomes almost painful for how oversensitive he is. Painful, but still nice. He goes soft while he waits but finds some satisfaction in his own body. In seeing Seunghyun fuck him like this; In the cum on his stomach; In his softening cock even. With the doors open to the outside world and a stranger two feet away through a little microphone, he feels physically tired but also invigorated. Like an itch has been scratched. His restless frustrations from the week fully extinguished.  
  
When Seunghyun does cum, he finally cracks. His voice falters and his eyes clench shut and he grimaces. It’s a little groan. He has to mask it with a cough and Jiyong tightens around him to make it worse. He rocks his ass back into him.  
  
Seunghyun pulls out and tries to put distance between them, so he can maintain his facade. He is slipping. He is getting tired of the careful control necessary to pull off what he’s just done. Seunghyun eases down beside him on the bed and Jiyong looks at him like this, totally insane. Dress shirt on, sweat on his forehead, pants around his ankles with his cock out. For the first time in his life, Jiyong wishes they were the kind of people who filmed themselves fucking so he could relive this utterly new Seunghyun over and over.  
  
Instead, he rolls over and licks the head of Seunghyun’s cock and Seunghyun cracks _again_ , a high-pitched sound coming out of him that he can’t quickly explain away. He covers his cock to protect himself and Jiyong laughs silently, relishing his suffering. While Seunghyun wraps up his phone call, he goes to take a hot shower, legs shaking on the way.

   


*

 

 

  
‘So?’ Jiyong asks, leaning over the kitchen counter. ‘Who was on the phone?’  
  
Seunghyun smiles wearily and accepts the bowl Jiyong hands to him. Rice and sides. It’s simple but he’s hungry. Fucking is hard work so Seunghyun must be hungry too. His hair is wet from his own shower and he accepts the food without question.  
  
‘It was a job interview,’ he answers.  
  
Jiyong passes him some chopsticks and shoots him a frustrated look.  
  
‘Is that the right time to fuck somebody? I have to ask’.  
  
‘It felt like a good time’.  
  
‘And how did your interview go? I gotta say, I didn’t catch the details’.  
  
Seunghyun smiles and rubs his chopsticks together out of habit.  
  
‘I got the job’.  
  
Jiyong’s eyes widen and he takes his bowl to the other side of the counter, sitting on the stool next to him. He rests a hand on Seunghyun’s thigh in anticipation. They talked about him getting a job or finding something to do with his time, but there were no concrete details. He didn’t know there were interviews in the mix.  
  
‘What job?’  
  
‘At the local gallery,’ Seunghyun answers. ‘As a kind of temporary director. It’s only a small joint, but it’s in the middle of the touristy part of town, so they get traffic’.  
  
He looks quietly satisfied, like he has done for days. Maybe he knew this was coming. Maybe, today’s phone call was just the final stage of a process he already knew the outcome of. He looks happy so Jiyong is happy for him, even without understanding what it all means.  
  
‘How will this work? Is it a 9 to 5?’  
  
It surprises him as he says it, so dependent on Seunghyun’s presence and their new routine already. But he wants Seunghyun to do things he enjoys. He is happy to sacrifice their time together to a working week if that’s what it takes. They have proven over the years they can survive distance and separation. What are a few hours each day?  
  
‘Yes and no. A lot of work I can do from home,’ Seunghyun says. ‘When I do go in, I can stay behind the scenes. I don’t want people seeing me or knowing I’m here. I was talking to the gallerist,’ he says. ‘He knows who I am. His director is leaving in two weeks on maternity leave and they’re both willing to take me on for a while’.  
  
‘That’s impressive without any experience’.  
  
‘True. But this is where I’ll get it. It’s a nice, small place. I can’t fuck anything up too badly and I can learn the ropes and see if this is the direction I want my life to go in. It’s a good time and place to try it out’.  
  
He says it with such a contented smile, totally at peace with his decision. Jiyong rests his head on his hand and looks at Seunghyun with a similar smile, proud of him for taking charge of his life.  
  
‘This is great’.  
  
‘You won’t miss me too much if I work?’  
  
‘No. I’ll be glad to see the back of you’.  
  
They kiss briefly but Jiyong holds a threatening fist between them when it ends.  
  
‘Why would you pull that upstairs on a phone-call as important as this one? Are you out of your fucking mind?’  
  
Seunghyun smiles and raises his chopsticks halfway to his mouth.  
  
‘I wanted the job, but I also want you to be okay’.  
  
Jiyong frowns, hopelessly in love with him before he’s even finished talking.  
  
‘You were bouncing off the walls. You said you needed a thrill and my options were _limited’_.  
  
Jiyong claps a dramatic hand over his heart, so grateful for his constant attention.  
  
‘I promise to return the favour someday’.  
  
Seunghyun, now with a mouth full of food, furiously shakes his head.  
  
‘No. Never. Do _not’_.  
  
Jiyong smirks and picks up his own chopsticks, shovelling a heap of food into his mouth. Things keep changing, but increasingly for the better. It is incredible to think what Seunghyun has done in such a short time. He said, before they ever left Seoul, that he wanted to investigate his options. He wondered if he might buy a gallery one day or make some kind of living out of art, not because he needed to work but because he was passionate about it. He wanted to know if he could do it. Now, he will.  
  
When they finish eating, Jiyong puts their bowls in the sink, but Seunghyun pulls him back by the wrist and pats his ass lightly.  
  
‘How are you doing?’  
  
‘How’s my ass? Good’.  
  
Seunghyun turns him around and pulls his sweats down a little to inspect the damage.  
  
‘It’s still a little red’.  
  
Jiyong talks over his shoulder.  
  
‘You’re a _natural’._  
  
He heads back into the kitchen and pulls his pants back up. Over the counter he sees Seunghyun’s bemused expression. They’ve never really done that before. They’ve certainly never done it _hard_. He wonders what made Seunghyun spontaneously do it. If he thought about it beforehand or if it was a spur of the moment thing.  
  
‘I liked it,’ Jiyong says confidently. ‘I didn’t think I would, but I did’.  
  
‘What about it?’  
  
‘I don’t know,’ he answers. ‘I like a bit of pain sometimes. It made everything else feel better. Or just more intense maybe. You want to try it?’  
  
‘Not really’.  
  
Jiyong smiles in answer and shrugs.  
  
‘Alright. If you change your mind, my hand is here and ready to go’.  
  
Seunghyun smiles.  
  
'Thank-you'.  
  
He gets up from the stool and passes through the kitchen on his way somewhere else, to pick up the phone again, or to check the hothouse. Whatever he does during the day. They often pass each other, heading in different directions. Jiyong stops him when he gets to the corner.  
  
‘Hey, if I asked you to do that again. To me. Would you?’  
  
Seunghyun laughs quietly. He lowers his head and kisses him, before continuing on.  
  
‘I’ll slap your ass whenever you want’.

  
  
* * *

 

 

 

A few days later, Jiyong is at the market alone. Seunghyun is on the other side of town meeting the gallerist in person, so he has come alone like always. He makes his way around the stalls and vendors. He takes his time. It is a struggle to read the shopping list Seunghyun wrote in his atrocious handwriting but he does his best. He throws their groceries into a basket on wheels, an ugly little thing an ajumma sold him in town. He can’t hack carrying everything on his shoulders anymore. He wants to blame old age, or simple laziness. Not being in the public eye has made him resentful of exercise so he enjoys the luxury of softening out and relaxing. All covered up, he looks like an ajumma anyway. It deflects attention. He fits right in.  
  
At the end of his rounds, he makes his way to the far-right corner. It is the end of the market furthest from his car. He frowns to see the missing woman still missing. Mrs Lee? The woman who sells him paint, and canvas and other stuff. Now that he has missed her three times running, he feels a pang of worry. She always talks to him when he stops. She asks him about his art and she _calls_ it art, and that's kind of nice. It’s nice to talk to someone like a regular human being with normal hobbies. He is starting to miss it. He pulls his mask down and looks aimlessly around, not sure what to do about this problem he has no control over. An ajumma at the next stall beckons him over.  
  
‘Are you looking for something?’  
  
‘I was just wondering about Mrs Lee’.  
  
The woman shakes her head and leans in conspiratorially.  
  
‘Poor woman. She’s been sick for weeks. Bed-ridden, or so I’ve heard’.  
  
‘What’s wrong with her?’  
  
Jiyong finds himself mirroring her posture, lowering his voice and leaning in.  
  
‘Pneumonia maybe. It’s her families fault. That no good son of hers’.  
  
‘How so?’  
  
‘Her house is old. It’s falling apart. It needs a new roof but she can’t afford to repair it. Her son comes from the city and promises to fix it. Every time, he promises to fix it’.  
  
‘But he doesn’t?’  
  
‘It’s been months. Rain, wind, all of it. Every time a breeze blows, she feels it. It’s no wonder she’s so ill. And where is the son? He came last week and has anything been done? He went back to the city’.  
  
Jiyong frowns and the ajumma seems encouraged by the rapt audience he is making. She adds a dramatic flair to her tone.  
  
‘It will be winter soon enough and what will she do? The cold will kill her, if the snow doesn’t make the roof fall in. Maybe it will kill her that way’.  
  
It’s a grim thing to imagine. He grimaces and she nods knowingly, like they’re both on the same page. Her son is a piece of garbage and this poor woman is destined to die. Unless the container asking for donations at the convenience store fills up.  
  
‘Do you know where she lives?’  
  
The ajumma eyes him warily, suddenly taking stock of the fact she doesn’t know him or recognise him. A young man taking an interest in an old woman’s whereabouts is suddenly suspicious.  
  
‘Why do you want to know? Does she know you?’  
  
‘Not really. We talk sometimes here at the market. I think she lives on my street though. I thought maybe I could check in. Maybe I can help out’.  
  
The woman eyes him up and down.  
  
‘Are you a builder?’  
  
Jiyong looks down at his grocery basket on wheels and flushes.  
  
‘No, but I’m resourceful’.  
  
The ajumma narrows her eyes, scrutinising his appearance. Ultimately, she decides he is trustworthy. That, or the new customer at her stall makes her eager to end their conversation. She quickly tells him the address and waves him off, serving the woman behind him.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pretty much the day after i posted the last part, i lost motivation. I had this all drafted already, and planned to fill in some emotional mushy family stuff, but it's been weeks and I still can't get in the headspace, so I'm just posting it as the weird thing it is with a lot of the family scenes i wanted, left out. Jiyong's documentary was depressing beyond words and any fake fic happiness is better than none.

 

  
‘Do you believe in past lives?’ Jiyong asks, face flattened against the pillow. ‘Do you ever meet someone and feel like you know them already?’  
  
Seunghyun puts his phone down. He has been checking the news like an old man reads the newspaper. He can’t get out of bed in the morning without knowing whether or not the world has ended.  
  
‘Who do you mean?’  
  
‘I don’t know,’ Jiyong answers. ‘Us? I don’t know if I believe in that stuff, but it would be nice to think we knew each other in another life’.  
  
Seunghyun looks at him quizzically and Jiyong admits this is a strange segue into the conversation.  
  
‘I was thinking about Mrs Lee,’ he confesses.  
  
‘Your ajumma friend?’  
  
He nods dolefully and rubs the sleep from his eyes.  
  
‘It rained last night’.  
  
Heavy, rolling thunder woke him in the early hours. The occasional streak of lightening illuminated the room. For a while, he luxuriated in the chaos. The sound of rain battering the glass doors was meditative. It relaxed him. Then, he thought of Mrs Lee. He pictured her throwing bucketfuls of water down her two front steps like someone on a sinking ship. There were so many holes in her ceiling when he first called in on her, he had to dodge vases and bowls on the floor, each one positioned to catch potential rain.  
  
‘I have to check on her’.  
  
‘Why do you care so much?’ Seunghyun asks.  
  
‘I don’t know,’ he answers. ‘It feels like I’ve known her a long time. It feels like we’re friends from way back. Like I knew her in another life or something. She looks at me like she really knows me. I like her’.  
  
Seunghyun smiles sympathetically and Jiyong wonders if he hasn’t lost his mind. It’s been two weeks since he first knocked on her door, and he has been back six times. Already, checking in on her has become part of his routine. When the sun is out, he walks the two kilometres to her house and back. He enjoys the exercise and the luxury of being alone without feeling lonely. The woods surrounding the house were part of his decision to buy it, but really being in it is something else. Hearing the birds and insects in the forest edge as he walks down the road is peaceful. Mrs Lee lives two houses down but it’s a thirty-minute walk. He has time to think. It’s productive.  
  
When he first knocked on her door, he did it because he felt bad for her. His grandmother died of pneumonia. It didn’t feel right to go past this woman’s house without checking in. He had her address. How could he not? The rumour mill painted a sad picture of a little old lady living in a house riddled with holes. The reality was not quite that. The roof was as damaged as the gossipy lady at the market intimated, but Mrs. Lee was her usual upbeat self when she opened the door. She greeted him with a smile on her face. Whatever sickness she had was on its way out. All that remained was a cough.  
  
She remembered him from the market. She remembered his name. She remembered every piece of information he had reluctantly let slip about himself when buying her paints and supplies. She wasn’t suspicious when he turned up unannounced. It was like she expected him. He was comfortable with her. She had an easy way about her. She asked him not to speak formally, so he didn’t. By his second visit, she was already speaking to him like family. She criticised his lateness. She chastised him for leaving food in his bowl when she invited him to lunch. The easy banter that sprung up between them eased an unrealised tension he felt being so far from friends and family. It was nice to talk to her, and it was nice to interact with someone other than Seunghyun. So, the rain from last night bothers him. He thinks about the vases and pots and bowls scattered across her floor. When he asked her about it, she shrugged. When he offered to fix the roof, she declined.  
  
‘Besides,’ he tells Seunghyun, ‘we have a lot of money, and she needs some. This house cost millions. We’re living in _luxury_. Meanwhile, she’s a two-minute drive away shovelling water out of her house because she lives in a cheese grater’.  
  
Seunghyun shrugs sympathetically. He has heard the whole of it already.  
  
‘What can you do? She doesn’t want your money’.  
  
Jiyong’s second and third visit were peppered by polite but insistent pleas for her to accept his help with the roof, but she was obstinate. Each time, the banter would last until she became defensive. He would back down and try again on the next visit.  
  
‘You’ll be working for a gallery in two days-time. Buy one of her paintings or something. Maybe we can give her money that way. Incognito’.  
  
‘You want me to abuse my position on the first day?’ Seunghyun asks.  
  
‘No, just fake it. Can’t we figure something out?’  
  
Seunghyun smiles and picks his phone back up.  
  
‘And when she finds out?’  
  
‘Does it matter?’ Jiyong answers, pulling the blankets up to his chin. ‘It will be too late. Will she pull a brand-new roof down?’  
  
Seunghyun shrugs amiably in answer and Jiyong pulls the blanket up further. It is a colder morning than usual. He stares at the screen of Seunghyun’s phone, eyes too blurry to make anything out. He is content to sit here and watch him. In two days-time, Seunghyun will be a gainfully employed director at a small gallery. In a lot of ways, it is the very definition of starting from the bottom. Not for a regular person, but for someone with means and the connections that Seunghyun has. For him to commit himself to this job in a backwater means investing himself, so he can get an education. Jiyong misses him already. He knows that throwing himself into Mrs Lee’s affairs is more than finding her a good companion. It’s a way of dealing with Seunghyun’s impending absence too.  


 

*  
  
  


  
There is still water on the floorboards. Not much. She has cleaned most of it away. Still, when he sits at the table, the light hits the ground in a particular way and he can see the remnants left behind. He starts glib.  
  
‘It rained last night. Did you notice?’  
  
She sits at the table opposite him and waves him away.  
  
‘Yes, and the house is still standing. It’s a miracle!’  
  
She mocks his concern. She has already heard his pleas and persuasions and brushed them aside. He can’t tell if she’s stubborn, dumb, or just doesn’t care. Maybe she’s a thrill-seeker. Maybe she gets her kicks from living under a knife edge. It annoys him. He has more money than he knows what to do with. Even now, he is earning money from royalties. He earns money sleeping. He is earning money right now while talking to her and she won’t accept his help. The cost of fixing the roof would make no difference to him. Her only son is living in Seoul in a studio apartment with a wife and newborn baby. He won’t be fixing the roof. Her husband? Dead. Who else is there? A collection jar full of spare change at the convenience store?  
  
‘I can have this roof fixed in a week,’ he says, gesturing toward the drying puddles on the floor. ‘There are so many patches of light coming through the ceiling, this room looks like a disco’.  
  
She smiles and shakes her head. The conversation is over already.  
  
‘I can fix it on my own,’ she says. ‘When my husband was still alive, we fixed everything together. We lived here forty years and never hired anyone. Never. I only need the money for tiles. I have some already, outside’.  
  
He knows about the tiles. There are maybe fifty stacked in piles by the door, along with her shoes and a plastic bucket. Many are damaged already. Even if they were in good condition, what’s the plan? Is she going to climb onto the roof herself and re-tile it? It’s an old Hanok. Forty years of DIY repairs have damaged it. The roof needs to be replaced. The gossipy woman at the market wasn’t wrong when she said that heavy snowfall might bring it down.  
  
‘I told you, I’m selling my paintings,’ she says. ‘I’ll buy new tiles soon. Don’t worry about me’.  
  
‘What happens when you get the tiles? Can I help then?’  
  
She shrugs.  
  
‘I’ve been doing it myself since before you were born. What do you know about repairing a roof?’  
  
Jiyong adopts a face of total confidence. He tries to circumvent her pride. He doesn’t know a thing about roofs except for the obvious, that a hundred holes are a hundred too many. Still, if he has to climb a ladder to spare her from doing it, he will. He’ll look up roof tiling on the internet. He’ll figure it out.  
  
‘I helped repair my grandmother’s roof,’ he lies. ‘It was similar to this one. I know how to do it’.  
  
‘I don’t believe you for a second’.  
  
‘And why not?’  
  
She smiles good naturedly.  
  
‘You never offer to repair the roof yourself. You offer to have it fixed, because you have money’.  
  
‘And?’  
  
‘I’m not a charity’.  
  
‘I’m not a philanthropist’.  
  
Mrs Lee laughs and her smile makes Jiyong pine for lost childhood vacations with his own grandparents. She is familiar to him, so he questions his motives. Maybe he’s only here because she reminds him of someone he loved. She has the same smile that his grandmother had. The same easy nature. It doesn’t make him feel very altruistic. But, maybe it isn’t that. As much as she is similar to his grandmother, she is dissimilar in other ways. She pushes his buttons but he likes that. Being Kwon Jiyong is a new experience still. He is grateful for her attention. She nags him. She doesn’t coddle him. For the past few years, he could count the people unafraid of him on one hand. Everyone else walked on eggshells. No experience was real.  
  
‘I don’t need any help,’ she says again.  
  
‘What if we trade? I fix your roof and you give me something in return?’  
  
‘You don’t have anything I want’.  
  
‘That’s presumptuous’.  
  
She gestures around.  
  
‘I have everything I need’.  
  
Jiyong sighs, aggrieved. He has never been so rebuffed when trying to do a nice thing. He thinks about climbing onto her roof in the middle of the night and peeling away tiles by hand. If he leaves a hole above her bed, won’t she have to accept? How can she earn enough money selling paintings below the counter of an isolated convenience store?  
  
‘Isn’t it a little irresponsible to expect me, a man in the prime of his life, to sit under a rickety old roof like this?’  
  
‘So don’t visit’.  
  
Jiyong folds his arms across his chest. He likes coming here, but after so many visits, her resolve is starting to infuriate him.  
  
‘You’re driving me crazy. I just want to fix your roof. We’re neighbours. What’s the problem?’  
  
‘Are you my nephew? How can you badger me like this?’  
  
‘Because you _need_ it!’  
  
She smiles at his exasperation and raises a hand in supplication.  
  
‘I appreciate your _many_ offers, but the answer is no’.  
  
Jiyong sighs, beleaguered and points an accusatory finger at her.  
  
‘I’ll keep asking you until you relent, but if this roof comes down before I can fix it, and I have to pull your body out from under the rubble? I will be very _very_ mad’.  
  
She shrugs.  
  
‘Won’t I be dead? What difference will it make to me?’  
  
He buries his face in his hands to dampen his budding anger. She is like a patient refusing medical treatment, someone on a ledge refusing to take his hand. He didn’t know good deeds could be so soul-suckingly frustrating. Sensing his impending meltdown, she changes the subject.  
  
‘You didn’t bring a painting?’  
  
He slowly reveals his face once more, patting his cheeks to cool them. For once, he is glad to leave this topic behind. He feels a blood vessel about to pop.  
  
‘I brought a small one, but I don’t know what for’.  
  
On his last visit, he asked about the paintings she left at the convenience store. She said some were her own, others done by customers of her market stall. When short on money, she would leave them around town with certain businesses. The small profits were usually enough to recoup the money she needed. Between her and the old man at the convenience store, they had practically started an under-the-table art dealership around town. She asked him to bring one of his own paintings the next time he visited. So, he pulls a small 8” x 8” canvas out of his bag and drops it on the table.  
  
She scrutinises it.  
  
Immediately, he regrets it. He is racked with anxiety. He wants to pull the small canvas out of her hands and throw it on a fire. Seunghyun is the only person who has seen his paintings since coming here, and that’s fine. He’s never shy of showing him. He never _feels_ bad if Seunghyun sees something unfinished, or even makes suggestions. He never thinks he should have done better. But now, it embarrasses him to have someone else see. He feels compelled to explain himself, to justify his work. He feels a surge of shame and doesn’t know why. He bumbles out an explanation.  
  
‘They’re colours,’ he says. ‘I just paint what I feel. It’s stress relief? It’s like meditation, that’s all’.  
  
He tries to downplay it. The thought of her seeing him as someone trying to be a legitimate artist makes him feel humiliated. He stresses its function as a hobby, which it is--- but he doesn’t know where the shame comes from. What if he _did_ want to be an artist one day? Is there something wrong with that? He makes excuses. He tells her his paintings are messy. That they only mean something to him.  
  
‘So?’ she answers. ‘Who’s to say nobody likes that? People like all kinds of art. Sometimes, pieces that let us decide what to see and feel are the best ones. Let me sell this at the market’.  
  
He laughs and pats his face with the back of his hand. He doesn’t know why--- back in Seoul, he liked to paint. He used to show his art all the time. Maybe there was some security in his name. In knowing that whatever he showed, someone would always be there with a kind word in response. Here in Inje, he is nobody by design. That means the stuff he paints has to speak for itself. Besides, he doesn’t paint to show people. He just does it to feel better. He likes to paint, that’s all. It doesn’t have to be more than that.  
  
‘I don’t think so’.  
  
‘Why not?’  
  
‘Nobody wants my paintings. Especially this one,’ he says, tapping the small canvas on the table. ‘It’s just red. I painted it when I was frustrated. It’s nothing’.  
  
She looks at him searchingly and he shrinks under her gaze.  
  
‘But you showed it to me,’ she says concretely. ‘I like it. It has feeling. That’s all art has to be. If you didn’t want other people to see, you wouldn’t have brought it. It’s okay to like painting and to be proud of your work. Let me take it to the market’.  
  
‘I don’t need money’.  
  
‘You wouldn’t get much for it. People at the market are poor. They don’t buy Picasso’s. But it’s a nice feeling,’ she says. ‘Knowing a piece of you has been accepted by someone else. If someone buys a painting and takes it home and gets enjoyment out of it? That’s nice’.  
  
Jiyong sighs. He folds his arms across his chest like a hug. He feels anxious. The thought of strangers seeing his work makes his skin crawl. It makes him sweat. Maybe that’s the price of success. The fear of rejection grows. Without his name on it, and his celebrity--- maybe people will look at this thing he created earnestly from his soul and hate it. Worse, maybe it will go unnoticed. He paints to meditate so the end results feel deeply personal. What does it mean if she displays this painting and nobody wants it? What does that say about who he is?  
  
‘I’m scared of people seeing this stuff’.  
  
‘That’s life,’ she answers simply, pulling the painting into her lap. ‘With each step, there is a moment when your foot is not on solid ground. Life is the same. _Bear it_ ’.  
  
With that, she has pulled the painting firmly out of reach. She squirrels it away. She gets up from the table and disappears with it like a fox. When she comes back a moment later, it is gone. He gets the feeling that even if he searched for it, he wouldn’t find it. He feels a pang of fear at its loss. Maybe, also—a tiny bit of excitement. She is going to try and sell his art, without his name attached. For the first time in almost twenty years, something he has made will have to speak for itself.  
  
He decides not to tell Seunghyun. If he tells him—he will let slip his fears, and Seunghyun will go behind his back and buy the painting himself to support him. He doesn’t want that. If nobody wants this thing he created and it can’t be sold, he wants to take the blow alone. Rejection in small healthy doses is okay. He will weather it like a normal person.  
  
Besides, Seunghyun is embarking on a big adventure of his own. He should leave him to it for a while. Seunghyun will have anxieties of his own.  
  
  


 

*  
  


 

‘How did your latest attempt go?’  
  
Jiyong sinks onto the couch by Seunghyun’s side and rests his head on his shoulder. Seunghyun is nice to ask. He is busy and has a lap full of papers that prove it. Papers he willingly shucks to one side to accommodate this dramatic entrance and couch sprawl.  
  
‘Not good. She’s _very_ happy to die in a tragic roof related accident’.  
  
‘Well, you expected that’.  
  
‘I _know,_ ’ he answers dramatically, relaxing his weight into Seunghyun’s side. ‘It’s still irritating. What’s her problem? She’s old and she’s going to die anyway? Why delay it? She has that attitude’.  
  
Seunghyun pats his shoulder encouragingly.  
  
‘She’s proud. Keep at her’.  
  
‘I will.’ Jiyong runs his hands through his hair, pulling out little knots with care. ‘I’ve adopted her,’ he says concretely. ‘She’s my surrogate grandma now. She’s going to have to accept my help sooner or later’.  
  
Seunghyun shakes his head in amazement.  
  
‘It’s impressive, really. I leave you alone for a few afternoons and you find yourself a new family’.  
  
His tone is light. He is in a relaxed mood. Jiyong takes a moment to admire the Seunghyun of Inje. Being in the middle of nowhere has changed him in subtle ways. He manages his time better. He manages his stress better. He is a more sedate, calm version of himself—but not so much that he has become a different person. So much of Seunghyun’s personality is his vivacity and unpredictability and he still has that. He is just more balanced now. Happier, maybe.  
  
‘Just say the word and I’ll find you a surrogate grandma of your own,’ Jiyong offers. ‘Maybe a grandfather? You could use a strong male influence in your life’.  
  
‘What does _that_ mean?’  
  
Seunghyun nudges him sharply and Jiyong clutches his side in mock pain.  
  
‘Leave me alone, I’ve had a taxing morning,’ he says. ‘And so have you, by the looks of it. What’s all this?’ he asks, gesturing at the papers on the side table.  
  
‘Work stuff,’ Seunghyun answers. ‘Things I have to read and sign’.  
  
‘That’s right. How did your meeting go today? You met with the gallerist?’  
  
He pulls himself from Seunghyun’s side and draws his feet up onto the couch. He faces him front-on and gives Seunghyun’s knee an encouraging squeeze. Seunghyun answers him in an excitable, breathless kind of way, pulling the papers back into his lap.  
  
‘I did,’ he says. ‘It was a lot to deal with. It’s a small gallery but he was taking me around and explaining in detail all the things I’ll be doing and I really freaked out for a minute. He talked about things I know nothing about because he assumed I knew already. What if he gave me this job under false pretences? Like I fucking lied about my qualifications? I don’t want to fuck this up. I don’t handle stress very well. I don’t want to go in there on Monday and freeze up and tank the whole business because it turns out I’m a moron’.  
  
Jiyong smiles in a pitying way at this flood of neurosis, and nudges Seunghyun’s leg.  
  
‘You’ve already curated exhibitions. You know more artists than you can count. You have so many of the connections necessary already. Besides,’ Jiyong adds. ‘You’ve stood on a stage in front of 60,000 people with a smile on your face. If you can do that, you can do anything’.  
  
‘You know that’s different,’ Seunghyun answers. ‘It’s harder one on one. When you’re on stage, people see a different version of you than what you really are. With something like this? It’s just me. The real me doesn’t come out very often. Usually, because he fucks things up’.  
  
Jiyong frowns, but he understands this breed of insecurity. He knows it intimately. Still, he has seen Seunghyun overcome impossible odds, so there isn’t a shred of doubt in his body that he’ll be okay at this job. He knows Seunghyun will thrive because he wants it. Because he cares so much about the outcome.  
  
‘I’ve known the real you for a long, long time. I trust you completely,’ he says. ‘You’ll do well. I know you will. You’re passionate and gifted and you work hard when you really want something. You know so much already. What you don’t know, you’ll pick up. You’ll be okay’.  
  
Seunghyun smiles, insecure but still excited. Anticipating a new chapter. He has been balanced lately. Mostly coping with this big scary life change in a healthy way. Jiyong sees the difference in him every day. He sees the difference in him now. He hoped when Seunghyun agreed to move here, he could find some peace and build a life for himself. He wanted this place to work for them both, but to actually get that? To have this fresh start be a positive change for both of them? It felt like such an unrealistic fantasy.  
  
‘Do you want me to tell my parents not to come?’ Jiyong asks, thinking of his birthday in two-weeks. ‘I think you’ll have enough on your plate. I can see them any time’.  
  
‘No,’ Seunghyun answers, laying a hand on his thigh. ‘It’s your birthday. I want them to come. It’s important’.  
  
‘So are you. I don’t want you to be stressed out’.  
  
His parents will be in the house for five whole days. Dami, on his birthday itself. That’s a lot to deal with on a good day, but while struggling through the beginnings of a new job? Seunghyun will have to work through the day and make nice with his father at night. The myriad ways his parents visit can go wrong are already making Jiyong nauseous.  
  
‘No. We have to break the ice,’ Seunghyun says. ‘Your birthday is a good time to ease them into our relationship’.  
  
‘Alright,’ Jiyong answers dubiously. ‘You’ve got two weeks to change your mind’.

 

  
  
  
 * * *  


  
  
The next week passes quickly. Jiyong puts off thoughts of his parents impending visit by playing the role of the dutiful house-husband. For a few days, he simply tries to make Seunghyun’s life easier. For all his outward calmness, Seunghyun is stressed out. He is anxious about his new job. Jiyong tries to ease his burdens. He cooks for him and does his chores. He gives him shoulder massages and pep talks. He washes his clothes. He irons. He asks him about his day each night. He blows him to help him sleep. He does it all.  
  
After the first few days, things settle down. Seunghyun gets to spend a work day at home, making calls from his study. He slips into his job gradually, but he likes it. He is unused to the workload. It has been years since either of them worked the equivalent of a full-time job, so it will take adjustment. Things will calm down over time. Jiyong supports him however he can. It makes him feel good to see Seunghyun out in the world. It is nice to hear about his days. When you’re together all the time, you run out of things to say to each other. Seunghyun’s job means they talk more. It’s good.  
  
He gets so wrapped up in Seunghyun’s slide into work, he realises too late that he has prepared absolutely fucking nothing for his parent’s arrival. Four days before they are expected to come, he finds himself in the big guest bedroom facing thick layers of dust. There is grime from floor to ceiling. The whole room smells musty. The door has been shut since they moved in--- the only time either of them have gone in was to stash things in the closet. So, in a panic, Jiyong vacuums and washes the sheets and throws the windows open and sprays half a bottle of air freshener around. It’s only the first of his worries. When he takes a break for lunch, he realises he has no food in the house. No food and no plans for what he can cook for his family. He promised himself he would present himself to them as a well-adjusted adult. He was going to scrub the house clean and light up some candles, put some expensive wine out, and _cook._  
  
Reluctant to look up recipes on the internet, he worries about the temptation of googling himself. He briefly entertains the idea of just buying some groceries and winging it. How hard can it all be? Some vegetables in a pan with some oils and spices? Voila. Then, within five minutes, he gives up entirely. He grabs his keys and goes in search of help.  
  
  


  
  
*

 

 

 

Seunghyun catches him hiding mountains of food two days later in the fridge and freezer.  
  
‘What’s all this?’  
  
Jiyong pauses with three loaded containers in his hand. He thinks about lying but can’t come up with a convincing alternative to the truth, so he caves immediately.  
  
‘It’s Mrs Lee’s cooking,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘So I can pretend I made it and my parents will think I’m a good cook.’  
  
Seunghyun barks out a sharp laugh which devolves into a grimace when he gets that it isn’t a joke. He folds his arms over his chest like a stern parent.  
  
‘We watched a movie with this _exact_ plot, four days ago’.  
  
‘Maybe we did,’ Jiyong shrugs.  
  
‘It didn’t go well’.  
  
Jiyong stacks the containers in the fridge and closes the door, frustrated that his subterfuge has been found out already. Is it so wrong to get life advice from American rom-coms?  
  
‘Can you distinguish between real life and a movie?’ he asks. ‘Films need conflict to move the story along. Real life is boring! How will they find out?’  
  
Seunghyun leans against the counter.  
  
‘You were the biggest star in Korea for a decade. You think life is boring?’  
  
‘You’re being obtuse,’ Jiyong enunciates. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just _wowed_ you with my newfound culinary skills’.  
  
‘There’s not a chance I would have fallen for that, and for the record, I like your cooking,’ Seunghyun says. ‘How did you con all this food out of your old lady friend?’  
  
Jiyong tries not to smile at the little compliment. He knows he isn’t a bad cook. He can do the basics and they taste fine. He just wants something more for his parents. He wants to paint a full picture of his life here. He wants everything to be the best it can be.  
  
‘I begged and pleaded on my knees,’ he answers stoically. ‘Literally. She agreed on the condition that I learn how to cook for real. I’ve been roped into some at-home cooking classes—under that holey roof too. Maybe it will cave in and kill us both’.  
  
Seunghyun rolls his eyes at this dramatic statement and then shrugs.  
  
‘I want to shame you for this insane subterfuge, but I also want to eat your old lady cooking so--- good luck. _Fighting’._  
  
Seunghyun slaps him on the back and Jiyong smiles sweetly.  
  
_‘Thank-you’._  
  
‘No problem. Can I ask why you’re doing this? Why do you want them to think you’re a Michelin chef?’  
  
Jiyong shrugs, feeling weird about it. Rationally, he knows it’s nonsense. Irrationally, he is riddled with anxiety. He wants to plan and prepare and micromanage every second of their stay. He wants to paint a picture of his life that doesn’t exist.  
  
‘Because I’m stressed,’ he says. ‘My family is coming here for the first time, to my house which I share with my fiancé, who is a man. It’s the first time they are going to see us together’.  
  
‘And you’re worried’.  
  
‘I want them to be _impressed._ I want them to be proud of me’.  
  
Seunghyun furrows his brow and Jiyong has to explain.  
  
‘I _know_ they’re proud of me already. I don’t mean that exactly’. He struggles to articulate what he does mean. He doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, or have his thoughts be misconstrued. ‘This is my home, and you’re my family,’ he says, tugging on Seunghyun’s shirt. ‘I want them to be proud of what I have _now_. This is a different me. I have a different life. This is new. Maybe they’ll think it’s less glamorous. I don’t want them to feel like I gave something up, you know? I don’t want them to come here and wonder why I made these choices’.  
  
‘Do you think they’ll be disappointed?’ Seunghyun asks, surprised. ‘Do you think they would rather you be a strung-out superstar? That they’ll see you here and miss G-Dragon? Maybe _you_ feel like you gave something up’.  
  
‘No. That’s not what I meant. I just want them to understand me. I want them to feel good about this place, because I do. Their opinion matters to me’.  
  
Seunghyun smiles sympathetically and Jiyong wonders how often Seunghyun thinks about _his_ life here. How often does he compare Inje to Seoul, knowingly or unknowingly?  
  
‘You gave up so much to be here with me,’ Jiyong says seriously. ‘The second you get tired of this life, you have to tell me. I’ll understand. Your happiness is my happiness. I don’t ever want you to feel stuck here, if you want to go back’.  
  
Seunghyun smiles in a sedate way, like he finds this sudden declaration amusing.  
  
‘I know’.  
  
Jiyong frowns at the way he brushes it off but leans in for a kiss anyway.  
  
‘I love you’.  
  
‘Me too’.  
  


 

  
  
* * *  
  
  


  
All too quickly, the day is upon them and the hour and the minute. Jiyong sees his parent’s car coming up the drive as he is walking past the window and he desperately calls out for Seunghyun. His parents are two hours early. Seunghyun meanders down the stairs and Jiyong forcibly pulls him to the door. He wants them to show a united front; both of them opening the door together like white people in a romance film. He knows Seunghyun is stressed about the visit, but he is masking it well, and Jiyong has anxieties of his own. In this moment, he is only thinking about himself. He straightens Seunghyun’s shirt and fluffs his hair in a nice way, then shakes his hands to get rid of some nervous tension.  
  
‘Okay,’ he says, turning back to Seunghyun. ‘These are the ground rules while my parents are here. Number one: You and I don’t sleep naked. In an emergency, we’re not running out of that room _au naturale’_.  
  
Seunghyun purses his lips in a restrained smile.  
  
‘Okay, got it. What’s the next rule?’  
  
‘No allusions to sex, or anything relating to sex’.  
  
‘Do you think that was on my agenda?’  
  
‘Not intentionally!’ he answers. ‘But this is our house. That we live in. Together.’ He points to the couch in the adjoining room ‘We had sex there. My father is going to sit on that couch’.  
  
‘I wouldn’t tell him that’.  
  
Jiyong plasters his hands to his face.  
  
‘This is going to be a disaster. Oh _god’._  
  
Seunghyun holds a hand up and points to the ring on his finger.  
  
‘If your parents have thought about us for more than five minutes, deep down, I think they know we have sex’.  
  
‘No,’ Jiyong answers, shaking his head. ‘They think of us as sexless beings. Really good friends who like to hold hands sometimes and sleep in two single beds’.  
  
The car comes to a stop outside and Jiyong cranes his neck back, trying to remember how to breathe. He needs this to go well. Every part of it. Because what if it doesn’t? What if his parents stay here is uncomfortable? What if the slow and steady ground he has been making over the phone to them about his relationship is undone when they see them together. What if they leave wondering _why Seunghyun? What the fuck is that about?_  
  
‘Any more rules?’ Seunghyun asks.  
  
‘Let’s try not to kiss on the mouth in front of them’.  
  
_‘Try_ not to? It’s not a blanket ban?’  
  
‘Well, what if I do something irresistible?’ Jiyong answers quietly, opening the front door. ‘If you can’t help yourself, I can’t stop you.’  
  
Seunghyun scoffs and they both give an awkward wave as his parents get out of the car.

 

  
  
  
*

 

 

 

So, his parents arrive and their initial interactions are strained and awkward, but he always thought they would be. His father shakes Seunghyun’s hand and his mother goes in for a hug/shoulder pat hybrid but Seunghyun doesn’t know what she wants so they awkwardly vie for position.  
  
Still, after the initial awkwardness, things settle. He and Seunghyun take his parents on the official tour of the house together. They take a good look in his art room, at the study—they look at the gym and the spare bedrooms. His mother talks about fixtures. She compliments the interior decorating and without having talked about it beforehand, he and Seunghyun instinctively take credit. Seunghyun points to a rug on one of the landings that he had nothing to do with, and says he bought it on holiday in Indonesia. Jiyong plays along. It becomes a game for them. They play the role of cosmopolitan sophisticates with exotic taste.  
  
At the end of it all, they walk around the property and his father perks up at the hothouse. An avid gardener, he looks at Seunghyun in amazement at the budding plants finally beginning to grow. They start talking about methods and fertilizers and techniques and Jiyong drags his mother away to look at the small sliver of nearby river that crosses their land.  
  
When they come back twenty minutes later, Seunghyun and his father are still talking about plants. There is no sign of any awkwardness between them. It seems unbelievable but Jiyong doesn’t question it. He supposes everyone can get along with the right mutual interests to talk about. The afternoon as a whole goes smoothly. Everybody is comfortable. They find safe, uncontroversial things to talk about.  


 

 

*

  


  
At dinner, his parents talk about themselves. They talk about their time in Samcheok and the sick relative Jiyong has never met. The conversation is innocuous. When he rises from the chair to get some water, his mother cringes at the sight of his thigh tattoos peeking below his rising shorts. Her first real interaction with Seunghyun is the desperate plea of a mother.  
  
‘Can’t you stop him?’  
  
‘From getting tattoos?’ Seunghyun asks.  
  
‘They don’t bother you?’  
  
Jiyong smiles from the kitchen. Seunghyun shoots him a look as if asking permission to speak honestly. Jiyong shrugs so Seunghyun tells her the truth.  
  
‘They don’t bother me. I like them’.  
  
‘You know he said he was only getting one,’ she says, resigned. ‘Then he came home one day with three more. Three. Now every time we see him, he has another one. He tries to hide them but we know’.  
  
‘He probably has more where we _can’t_ see,’ his father says, eyeing Seunghyun.  
  
Seunghyun clears his throat at the intimation and Jiyong returns to the table. Seunghyun looks strained but Jiyong knows it’s not embarrassment as much as him desperately wanting to make an inappropriate joke. He can see the machinations in his brain and the tattooed ass or dick joke sitting in the back of his throat. He steps in to make sure Seunghyun doesn’t follow through.  
  
‘No, Dad, I don’t have a tattoo on my ass or anywhere else’.  
  
Frankly, the ones on his thighs can be sexualised enough. He and Seunghyun have both got the most out of them a dozen times over.  
  
‘You can’t stop him?’ his mother asks Seunghyun good-naturedly. She reaches a hand across the table and pats his wrist. ‘Please, for a desperate mother. Be a good influence on him.’  
  
Jiyong sniggers at the mere suggestion and dinner continues. It has an undercurrent of awkwardness as they circumvent certain topics, but the evening is mostly relaxed. His parents compliment his cooking and Seunghyun doesn’t out him or laugh. He joins in on their praise and calls him a proficient cook; he tells them he could cater parties and Jiyong feigns modesty. It’s fun. They keep it light and the conversation shallow for the most part. By the time dessert hits the table, Jiyong is feeling good about the next few days. He is proud of his parents for being so open. He is proud of Seunghyun for interacting with them in a comfortable way. A hundred potential crises have already been averted.  
  
‘This looks expensive,’ his father says, nudging dessert with his spoon.  
  
‘It is,’ Jiyong says. Artisanal cakes and chocolates from Seoul. ‘Enjoy them. Don’t waste any’.  
  
His father obediently puts a chocolate in his mouth and points a lazy finger at Seunghyun. Jiyong raises his head in anticipation. When his father finishes chewing he speaks to Seunghyun like they are the only two people in the room. His manner changes. He is suddenly a mob boss interrogating a snitch.    
  
‘My son has a lot of money’.  
  
‘Yes,’ Seunghyun answers. ‘He does’.  
  
‘You want a piece of the pie?’  
  
Jiyong rolls his eyes.  
  
‘Do you think Seunghyun is poor?’  
  
‘You've done movies. How much money do you have?’ his father asks Seunghyun, ignoring Jiyong’s protestations entirely. ‘Are you investing it properly? If you retired today, what does your bank account look like in twenty years?’ It’s a loaded question and Jiyong doesn’t like it. He tells Seunghyun not to answer.  
  
‘Dad, you think you’re being funny but it’s just rude. Stop’.  
  
‘I’m just having some fun’.  
  
And the thing is— Jiyong knows that. He has heard enough of his father’s jokes to recognise a bad one now. He is just playing a character. The overprotective father. He knows how much money Seunghyun has. Even if Seunghyun were poor, his father would never think these things, let alone say them in seriousness. But Jiyong is ruffled by it. He reacts like it _isn’t_ a joke. The reaction slips out of him and he is embarrassed by it.  
  
‘You barely know each other! Can you just ask him about his hobbies and stuff before you start cracking jokes about his motives? You think it’s funny to suggest nobody can genuinely love me?’  
  
His father is stunned by the outburst and answers quietly, his attitude changed completely.  
  
‘It was just an ice-breaker. Just a joke’.  
  
The table settles into an awkward silence and Jiyong flushes, ashamed of his outburst the second it is over. His father apologises to Seunghyun and Jiyong feels bad for embarrassing him. His father is doing his best, and his best is really very good. He made the decision to come here and spend time with them together. He hasn’t said anything inappropriate before now or asked probing questions. He has bonded with Seunghyun over the garden and kept a smile on his face.  
  
Seunghyun squeezes his leg beneath the table but Jiyong brushes it away. He is humiliated. It isn’t until after they’ve all left the table that he can apologise to them separately.    
  
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that’.  
  


  


*

 

 

 

 

After his father has gone to bed and his mother is getting ready to join him. Jiyong ducks into his art studio and takes a quiet moment to decompress. To breathe. Seunghyun is upstairs, probably snoring already. They had a quiet moment on the stairs after dinner. Seunghyun cheered him up. He didn’t have the same disastrous opinion of dinner. He thought it went pretty well.  
  
Jiyong gratefully accepted a kiss from him and re-joined his parents, more relaxed. For the last two hours before bed, they all watched a movie together with occasional laughs and interjections. It was nice.  
  
So, Jiyong takes a moment now to process the day. To process dinner. To process the fact that his parents have now spent hours with him and Seunghyun together, and the world hasn’t ended. He runs his hands through his hair and cracks his neck. Weeks of unconscious stress start to ease. Not completely—there are still four days left. But he allows himself to hope today was an augur of good things to come. That this time can be comfortable and simple, if he _lets_ it.  
  
His mother comes into the room behind him and says goodnight. She has taken her make-up off and put her pyjamas on.  
  
‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ he says, squeezing her shoulder. ‘Thank-you for today. I’m sorry again about dinner’.  
  
She shrugs, understanding. He feels bad for putting her in an uncomfortable situation. She is someone who has to mediate disagreements. She can’t let things fester. She didn’t know what to say at dinner. He made her feel awkward.  
  
‘I know this is stressful for you,’ she says.  
  
‘Yeah’.  
  
He waits for her second _goodnight_ , but it doesn’t come. She is in no hurry to go to bed. Instead, she lingers. She looks around the room at the canvases propped against the wall and on the three easels. She takes a quick turn around the room for a second time. She already had a good look earlier in the day. She is stalling.  
  
‘What?’ Jiyong asks.  
  
She shrugs in answer, as if content to stay silent. Then she pauses and sighs and Jiyong feels the hairs on his neck stand up when she approaches him with hesitation. She wants to say something but it’s too difficult. In an instant, he is filled with worry. What is it? Something about Seunghyun? Their relationship? What criticisms is she withholding?  
  
‘I have to ask you something,’ she says anxiously. Her voice nothing but a whisper.  
  
‘What is it?’  
  
She looks around the room, as if looking for an out. Some distraction to pull her away from this moment. It makes him fearful.  
  
‘Are you _safe?_ ’ she asks.  
  
He finds himself looking at the locks on the windows. What does she mean, safe? This house is a fortress. How much security does she need?  
  
‘You and Seunghyun,’ she clarifies.  
  
Jiyong feels a sudden pressure in the back of his head. What is she talking about? For some reason, he is completely unable to process it. It is so far beyond the realm of possibility, he doesn’t even consider her real meaning. His thoughts are still on dinner and the surprisingly warm atmosphere.  
  
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’.  
  
‘ _Intimacy_ ,’ she blurts out. ‘I assume you ….’  
  
The other shoe drops and he feels a physical lurch in his gut.  
  
‘Have sex? Jesus, _mom!_ ’ he whispers hysterically. ‘Are you asking me if I use _protection?’_  
  
‘I was reading on the internet about HIV---’  
  
‘Jesus Christ’.  
  
He instinctively shuts the door behind him. This is a nightmare best had in a locked room that nobody else can stumble into. He wants this embarrassment locked down tight. He breaks into a cold sweat. He feels clammy. She looks at him, pained.  
  
‘It’s serious!’  
  
‘For starters,’ he answers, equally pained, ‘stop reading things on the internet’.  
  
‘How else can I know things?’  
  
She says it with such surety and innocence, he pauses. He realises that she _is_ ignorant. This isn’t a way of humiliating him, she has legitimately read something about HIV on the internet and wants reassurance.  
  
When he first came out, she explained that she was never against the idea of him being gay or bisexual or anyone else being those things either, she had just never thought about it. Somehow, the question never entered her consciousness as a tangible thing. When he came out to her, she must have jumped online and read a hundred fear-mongering articles, trying to understand. Being asked point-blank is still humiliating. He wants to stomp his feet and blush and gag in a dramatic display, but his relationship with Seunghyun has changed since coming out; or not his relationship per se, but the way he perceives it and talks about it. In some ways, it has become a more adult situation. He feels bad for her. He sprung so much on her, and then left her to marinate in it. He tries to be honest with her now, as difficult as it is.  
  
‘Mom. Look. I’m just going to tell you the truth. No, we _don’t_ use protection’.  
  
She looks shocked.  
  
‘Because,’ he says quickly, raising his hands in self-defence, ‘we’ve been together for ten years. _Longer._ We got tested a long time ago and every now and then we get tested again. It’s like an unspoken agreement. Security, in case one of us decides to cheat, which we never have, but we do it anyway,’ he says. ‘So we’re good. We don’t use protection anymore and that’s okay. Really’.  
  
‘But I was reading that it’s never safe to—'  
  
_‘Mom—_ ’ Jiyong takes a deep breath. He cuts her off before she can even finish her sentence. Already, he can intuit the message. He crosses his arms over his chest, each hand on the opposite shoulder, hugging himself. This is the last conversation he ever wanted to have with her. ‘The danger comes from not knowing who you’re having sex with,’ he says, inescapably tense. ‘When people don’t know or disclose their health stuff, but Seunghyun and I are good. I would never put myself at risk, or him either. We trust each other. We did everything right. I promise you’.  
  
She frowns in answer, _desperate_ to be reassured but uncertain all the same. He admires her boldness. Still, there is a limit to how much he is willing to say. They have always been close but _this_ close? Talking about what happens in the bedroom close? She will have to get the bulk of her gay sex education somewhere else. He takes her hands and squeezes them.  
  
‘I promise you, I am very safe. Okay?’  
  
‘Alright’.  
  
She looks doubtful but concedes. She has a long list of unasked questions waiting to go, he knows, but she can sense his discomfort. She is throwing him a lifeline. For now anyway.  
  
‘Are there any other uncomfortable questions you need to ask me?’ he asks, voice higher than usual. ‘I’m _begging_ you to say no’.  
  
He lets her go and she adopts the stance of a beleaguered parent.  
  
‘You don’t have to act like you’re a little boy and I’m embarrassing you. It’s not comfortable for me either, but I want to be sure that you’re safe and happy, and that everything is going well for you. I ask the same things of Dami. You don’t get an exemption because you’re going to marry a man’.  
  
Jiyong purses his lips in a barely suppressed smile. They have talked about his situation over the last few months, but never in any depth. They do talk about Seunghyun, but swapping domestic anecdotes isn’t a hearty conversation. She is still awkward about it all in some ways, but unthinking, she has already accepted an inevitable future where they get married someday. A moment he sometimes doubts himself, it is so in the realm of impossible things.  
  
‘I am safe, Mom, and happy. You’ll see that this week’.  
  
‘I hope so’.  
  
She pulls him into a hug and he allows himself to enjoy it. He has missed her, really. It is hard to make a new life for himself when she is so far away. It’s different from touring and being gone for months on end because Inje has a sense of permanence.  
  
‘Thank god that talk is over,’ he says, when they separate. ‘I started having chest pains’.  
  
She folds her arms.  
  
‘Well, I don’t know things! I don’t know anything. You talk to me about things going on, but never the past. It’s hard for your father and I to come into your home and feel comfortable when we don’t know anything about your relationship. With your sister, we know all about her husband. We know where they met and where they went on their first date. I heard all about their milestones. With you, I have nothing. Of course I have to ask questions’.  
  
‘You already know how Seunghyun and I met’.  
  
‘What about the rest?’  
  
‘Well, what do you want to know?’  
  
‘I don’t know,’ she says innocently. ‘Tell me about your first kiss!’  
  
‘Oh my god’.  
  
Jiyong sits on a nearby stool in front of a fledgling canvas. So far, the painting is an amorphous blob. His mother follows suit and pulls another stool closer to him. She sits down with her hands in her lap and stares a hole into the side of his head.  
  
‘What?’ she asks. ‘Dami told me about hers’.  
  
‘That’s different! You’re mother and daughter. You’re supposed to talk about things like that’.  
  
‘And who you do talk to? Your father?’  
  
_‘Ha’._  
  
‘So?’ she gestures. ‘Why can’t you talk to me? Because you’re a man and men aren’t supposed to talk about their feelings? You’re not like that. You always talk about how you feel. There’s nothing wrong with it. Tell me about your first kiss’.  
  
‘I don’t think you’ll like that story’.  
  
‘Why not?’  
  
‘Because it involves me smoking?’ he jests.  
  
It isn’t a lie. She has harangued him for the better part of a decade to stop smoking. He has managed it dozens of times. He just starts up again, for whatever reason. She doesn’t know he was a habitual smoker as a teen though. On the one occasion she caught him, he said he was just experimenting. That he had never done it before.  
  
She narrows her eyes and her jaw tenses. He sees it. But she takes a moment and lets it go. She exhales quietly and pretends like it doesn’t matter.  
  
‘Just tell me. I want to know’.  
  
He shakes his head in amazement and wonders if he can really tell her. The story isn’t explicit or shocking, but he has never told anyone. How could he? For seventeen years, this memory has been his and Seunghyun’s alone. Still, it would be nice to talk. It would be nice for the memory to exist in someone else. In moments of morbid awareness, he thinks about he and Seunghyun dying together in an accident. If they did, their whole lives together would disappear in an instant. There would be no-one left who remembered.  
  
‘Alright,’ he shrugs, as reluctant as he is keen. ‘Our first kiss was at the old YG building. Seunghyun and I were out the back in the alley sharing a cigarette. It was Seunghyun’s last one but he was sharing it with me anyway. I was barely eighteen at the time’.  
  
_‘Eighteen?’_  
  
He shrugs. In a way, their relationship started with this first kiss when he was eighteen. Now, he is thirty-four and they are engaged.  
  
‘I took the last drag,’ Jiyong explains, ‘which didn’t impress him. So, while the smoke was still in my mouth and throat, Seunghyun put his hand on my face like _this_ ’. He reaches out and gently mimics Seunghyun’s touch, holding his mother by the jaw, his thumb and middle finger on her cheeks. ‘He leaned in close to me and put his lips on mine and—’ he squeezes his fingers softly so his mother’s lips part. ‘And he took it all back! He inhaled the smoke right out of my mouth’.  
  
He releases his mother and she grimaces.  
  
_‘_ That was your first kiss?’  
  
‘No,’ Jiyong answers, amused at her disappointment. He wonders if she imagined a tender peck or wild emotion. ‘That was such a Seunghyun thing to do. He was always weird and unpredictable. I thought it was funny--- but then he looked at me afterwards and I don’t know,’ he shrugs. ‘I can’t explain it. We made eye contact and there was something in it. He leaned in and I leaned in, and we kissed. There was zero thought behind it’. He picks up a nearby paintbrush and holds it loose in his hand, remembering. ‘It was a good kiss though. It lasted a long time,’ he says. ‘Until someone opened the door and we jumped apart. Then we went back inside and never mentioned it again’.  
  
‘You didn’t talk about it?’  
  
‘No. I don’t know why. I didn’t worry about it. It was just something that happened. When it was over, it was over. I didn’t think about it again, until the next time’.  
  
‘The next time?’  
  
Jiyong scoffs. He knows the rabbit hole this confession can send him down. He feels lighter just for telling her this one memory. Just to share a private moment with her that has always meant something to him. If she probes him, he might talk about something better left unsaid.  
  
‘Do you want to hear my life story?’  
  
‘Just a bit more,’ she pleads.  
  
He turns back to the canvas and takes a little breath. It is embarrassing to talk about his love life with his mother, but maybe this is it. When will he ever have another chance? Who else is there?  
  
‘The second kiss was similar to the first,’ he says. ‘We were alone, we made eye contact and there was something in it. We kissed, and when it was over it was over’.  
  
‘I can’t imagine it,’ she says, knowing his younger self’s thirst for drama. ‘I can’t imagine you not saying anything or not making a big deal about that’.  
  
‘I know. Our friendship was weird at that time. We were getting closer but didn’t talk about it. We just liked being around each other,’ he says honestly. ‘I wanted to be near Seunghyun all the time and we usually were. Sometimes we touched each other in innocuous ways. I would put my head on his shoulder or hug him from behind. He would touch my fingers beneath a table. Stuff like that. Those were things I didn’t want to do with anyone else, so there was something to it. I still had girlfriends and he was trying to make it work with women too at that point, but even then? Even when I was dating a girl I really liked,’ he says, ‘there were still moments when Seunghyun and I would be alone together and we would kiss, and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. I never thought I shouldn’t be doing it. I know that’s wrong, but that’s how it was,’ he says. ‘I didn’t really understand it yet. I didn’t know that I could like men in that way, I had never been interested in a man before. I think I just thought that Seunghyun and I were friends fooling around or something. That it didn’t mean anything’.  
  
‘You never thought you might be,’ she hesitates, trying to remember the right word. ‘Bisexual?’  
  
‘No,’ he shrugs. ‘Of course, after a while I started to wake up to myself. I noticed that I kind of did like men actually. I found other men handsome and I liked them, just not in the same way I liked Seunghyun. But it took years to figure that out’.  
  
‘So what made you realise?’ she asks, leaning closer. ‘That you had feelings? You say you’ve been together for ten years. What changed ten years ago?’  
  
Jiyong exhales loudly through his nose, and cocks his head inadvertently like a dog, like it will help him think. He’s never really analysed the past. He never wondered if there was a specific moment or tried to reason out the timeline because it just didn’t happen that way. He gets the feeling she wants him to talk about a lightbulb moment of clarity, but he doesn’t have one.  
  
‘I wish I had something specific to tell you, but I don’t. Things happened slowly for us.’ He takes another short breath and turns to face her. ‘I just date us to that particular time because it was the first time we said we loved each other. But, we were together longer than that,’ he says. ‘It’s hard to explain. We were getting closer but it wasn’t something we ever talked about. Until we said _I love you_ , we had never talked about what we were doing’.  
  
He doesn’t tell his mother that _closer_ means they started having sex. After years of un-talked about kisses and more innocuous encounters, they went a step further. Their promotions together as a subunit were going well. They were revitalising and _fun_. They were together all the time. It seemed inevitable that a kiss would eventually go further. When it did, it seemed natural. It didn’t feel like a huge step had been taken that could never be undone. A fumble in a hotel with their pants unbuttoned didn’t feel much different to six years of occasional kisses, and once _that_ happened it didn’t feel like a stretch to get on his knees. He had no experience with other men, but he was twenty-three and cocky and he’d received blow jobs before so what difference did it make? Riding the wave of their album’s success, he was often agitated and needed an outlet. One night they were both drunk and he initiated. Seunghyun returned the favour. He never felt bad about doing that. It felt nice and the next day their relationship was no different. They were the same people they were before. They never talked about it. He never felt like they needed to.  
  
Things changed in Jeju. At the tail end of their promotions, while filming their last video, Seunghyun uncharacteristically said in the hotel one night, _do you want to have sex?_ Jiyong thought, Christ _—why not?_ He wanted to know what it felt like. He enjoyed everything else they were doing. But sex was different in the end. It was more than a string of kisses or a blow job. A blow job could be as informal as a handshake, but having sex for the first time? They had to talk to each other.    
  
It was okay as far as first-time’s go, but it hurt more than he expected. Until they figured it out anyway. It was intense, and intimate. He wasn’t prepared for it. For every past situation, he felt they had equal power. The threat of mutual destruction was a comfort. It emboldened him. But, sex was different. It was the first time he felt an imbalance between them. It was the first time he thought Seunghyun had the ability to hurt him, and not just physically. Sex made him feel vulnerable. Despite the calm, unspoken relationship between them, it was hard to trust Seunghyun with this. Hard to trust that he wouldn’t hurt him or ridicule him afterwards. But Seunghyun was good. He did his best. They figured it out together. Jiyong realised mid-way that it wasn’t a joke. Sex wasn’t something Seunghyun would use against him later.  
  
While trying to make him comfortable, Seunghyun said ‘ _I don’t want to hurt you,’_ and Jiyong took a deeper meaning from that. He read between the lines. _‘I like you. I want to be closer to you. Like this’._  
  
Jiyong turns the paintbrush in his hand, remembering it. After Seunghyun’s confession, he made his own. Things he had never really thought about until he was on his back, flinching from the sporadic pain of being fucked for the first time—but it wasn’t fucking really, it was slow and a little awkward, but nice enough. It was touching, in a way. It made him realise that he wanted closeness too; that he wanted to do these things with Seunghyun, not because they felt nice but because he wanted to be closer to him. All those times he put his head on Seunghyun’s shoulder or shuffled closer at a shared table. Those weren’t games. He was just desperately reaching out.  
  
‘Who said it first?’ his mother asks. ‘Who said _I love you_ first?’  
  
‘I did’.  
  
She holds a hand over her heart and Jiyong flushes at her reaction.  
  
‘Get that look off your face. I don’t have a romantic story for you. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a grand gesture with a bouquet of roses’.  
  
‘What was it?’  
  
‘A  conversation when I was depressed?’ he answers. ‘During my drug scandal, Seunghyun was good to me,’ he says. ‘Up to that point I still thought we were having fun. Even when things escalated, I thought that. I thought we were just fooling around, and when we found girlfriends, we would go back to being friends. But when that scandal happened, I really thought I had ruined us. All of us. I thought I had destroyed our dreams. I didn’t come out of my room for weeks’.  
  
‘I wanted you to come home,’ she says tenderly, remembering.  
  
‘I couldn’t,’ he tells her. ‘I was embarrassed. I felt like shit. I just wanted to be miserable. Seunghyun was the only one who let me do that. The others gave me pep talks. They tried to motivate me. They wanted me to work. They wanted to get my mind off things. But Seunghyun would come into my room and get into bed with me. Nothing sexual,’ he says to reassure her, though sometimes it was. ‘He was just there. He was always there. He let me work through it in my own way. He never made me feel bad about what I had done, or like I wasn’t doing enough to fix it. Our futures hung in the balance, but he never held it against me. He never made me feel guilty’.  
  
She smiles softly, like this isn’t the story she expected to hear, but she is okay with it all the same. She can feel his sincerity and the power of little gestures. Love isn’t about the big moments, it’s about the small ones. It’s about the everyday stuff that accumulates.  
  
‘So, I don’t know,’ Jiyong shrugs. ‘We were talking one night and it hit me all at once, everything he had done for me. Everything we’d been doing for the last few years. It all came together in my head and I blurted it out. I just said, _‘Oh. I love you_ ’. I thought if Big Bang was going to end, I wanted him to know that. I loved him and I was grateful’.  
  
‘Did he say it back?’  
  
‘Yeah,’ Jiyong says mutedly. ‘He said it back’.  
  
‘And that was that?’  
  
‘Pretty much,’ he answers. ‘I think that scandal helped us. It was my third or fourth one, and every one of them felt worse than the last because I had more to lose each time,’ he confesses. ‘After that one, I tried to seal myself off. I thought I could protect myself against the next one, but I guess I changed in other ways too. I decided Seunghyun was important to me and if I could lose everything in an instant, why not try? I made the choice to be open with him. I gave everything to our relationship. I thought if it went nowhere, I still gave it my best shot. If it didn’t work out, it wasn’t meant to be, you know? But it did work out,’ he says. ‘We’ve never really had any problems. Just small stuff’.  
  
‘Ten years and no problems?’  
  
‘Nothing serious. Sometimes we took breaks from each other but we never broke up,’ he says. ‘We would take time apart, you know? Like--- ‘ _I’m going away for a few weeks and I don’t want to see your face or hear your voice, I’m fucking sick of you,_ ’ but we were always happy to see each other after a break. It’s how we stayed sane. It was hard not to be annoyed with each other, recording or promoting, or on tour. When you’re always together and you can’t have five minutes to yourself, it creates problems. But, we always worked it out. I never felt like we were in danger’.  
  
‘And now?’  
  
‘We fight,’ he says honestly, ‘but it’s never serious, and we always talk after we cool off. We never let things get bigger than they have to be’.  
  
He can count on one hand all the major fights they’ve had, but he was never really fearful. Even then, they talked to each other. Even when they took breaks early on, they had rules. Either of them could call for a break at any time, open or closed. Open meaning they could see other people, closed meaning they couldn’t--- that they needed some time apart but were still very much together. They both asked for breaks a dozen times, but always closed. The one time Seunghyun called for an open break, it lasted six hours. He came back with his tail between his legs. _What was I thinking?_ After that, there were no more breaks. Nothing since then has put them in any danger.  
  
Jiyong exhales quietly. He feels a kind of release from this. He is so grateful to have told someone, even the cliff notes. If something ever happens to them, his mother will _know_. She will have some understanding.  
  
She shakes her head, but he doesn’t have time to wonder what it means. She stands and is on him in two seconds flat. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses the top of his head.  
  
_‘Thank-you’._  
  
He doesn’t ask what for. He knows. She’s grateful that he shared something with her. She is grateful to have some history and to know this relationship of his is something genuine. Ten years signified it, a protracted seventeen really solidifies it; but perhaps there’s a difference hearing him talk about it. Maybe she felt his sincerity. He wants her to. He wants the next few days to go well. He wants his parents to feel the love in this house. To feel that, even when it isn’t perfect, it’s still good. He wants them to approve of the life he’s chosen. Not just Seunghyun, but Inje too. Taking a break. All of it. He wants them to understand the ups and downs and unexpected choices.  
  
He squeezes her arm and pats her sleeve gently.  
  
  


  
* * *  
  
  


 

‘Why is there a spotlight above the toilet? I was in there and it felt like I was putting on a show’.  
  
It takes Jiyong a whole moment to process his father’s good-morning in the kitchen. He looks instinctively for Seunghyun before realising he’s at work and he has no back-up. He has to weather these jokes alone.  
  
‘That’s just the way the bathroom is, dad’.  
  
‘I get applause, even when I take a shit! _Guess I’m famous!’_  
  
His father croons the lyrics like they are part of an old trot song and Jiyong grimaces. It’s the fiftieth time he has prattled the line to him, but the first time it’s been situationally appropriate.  
  
‘I’ve written hundreds of songs. Why are those the only lyrics you remember?’  
  
‘They made me laugh!’  
  
He accepts the bowl his father hands him and drags his feet, slowly trudging to the table. He wants to go back to bed, but his father hammered on the bedroom door at seven like they were schoolboys late for the bus. Seunghyun was already getting up, so _he_ didn’t mind.  
  
Jiyong sulks.  
  
His father joins him at the table and they eat together in silence. When he is near the end of his food, his father asks where Seunghyun is.  
  
‘He’s at work’.  
  
‘The gallery job, right?’  
  
Jiyong is tired and sour, but he recognises his father’s attempts to talk about Seunghyun. To normalise things and be open to them.  
  
‘Yeah. It’s a big deal,’ Jiyong answers. ‘I’m proud of him’.  
  
His father nods, trying to think what to say. Jiyong wonders if this kind of conversation is actually difficult for him, or just new. He would give anything to know what his father really thinks. Does he approve? Is he ambivalent?  
  
‘There’s nothing wrong with honest work,’ his father says. Jiyong smiles at this half compliment. ‘And the hothouse will turn out well. I gave him some tips’.  
  
‘Thank-you’.  
  
His father nods in answer, stoic, and Jiyong talks without meaning to.  
  
_‘Thank-you_ ,’ he stresses. His father looks at him with wide eyes and Jiyong fidgets. ‘Thank-you for trying. Thank-you for doing all this. I’m sure this is hard for you. You don’t know what it means to me that you’re here’.  
  
There is so much he wants to say, but he cuts himself off and scrapes the bottom of his bowl with his spoon, embarrassed. His father feels a similar way. He clears his throat and nods curtly.  
  
‘Of course’.  
  
  


  
*  


  
  
After breakfast, they all go to the market together. Seunghyun comes home for lunch so he can join them. He throws a beanie and a mask on. He wears the most unassuming clothes he can find. Jiyong is grateful for the rare chance to be out together but he still feels the danger. Seunghyun tells him there haven’t been any exposé’s online about their new living situation and he wants to keep it that way. Their peace here is contingent on anonymity. The second their whereabouts make front page news, it’s all over.  
  
So, he asks his parents to go around the market on their own and to meet them later at the car. If they are apart, there is less chance of he and Seunghyun being recognised. It is pointless wearing a disguise if he’s going to traipse around with his mother, who looks exactly like him. Thankfully, his parents don’t mind. They understand it. Jiyong smiles at the sight of their held hands as they move away from him.  
  
‘They’re very cute,’ Seunghyun says.  
  
‘Where do you think _I_ got it from?’  
  
‘You didn’t buy it?’  
  
Jiyong gestures at his own masked face.  
  
‘You think you can buy this cuteness? This is limited edition stuff. Only one ever made’.  
  
‘I’ve seen some good knock-offs’.  
  
Jiyong elbows him and makes his way toward the opposite end of the market. He hasn’t seen Mrs Lee in a few days. This is her first week back at the market after her illness—which means this is his first chance to buy new paints and canvases. He is running short. So, he walks and Seunghyun obediently follows. Seunghyun has seen her on his own rare trips to the market, but as far as Jiyong knows, never spoken to her.  
  
She smiles broadly when she sees them coming. Even with his face covered, a beanie around his eyebrows, and a sweater on that hides his body—he is obvious to her.  
  
‘I was just thinking about you,’ she says, when they reach the table.  
  
‘I can’t blame you,’ Jiyong answers, flicking some invisible hair over his shoulder. He pulls his mask out so she can hear him better.  
  
‘How do you feel?’  
  
‘Better. No more cough’.  
  
Her eyes turn to Seunghyun and Jiyong gestures to him.  
  
‘This is my friend, Seunghyun’.  
  
They exchange pleasantries. Seunghyun uses his fake voice for some reason, one lighter than his regular. It makes Jiyong smile, but it is nice to see them talk to each other, however brief.  
  
‘I have something for you,’ she says smiling, rifling below her table.  
  
Her excitement piques Jiyong’s interest and he shuffles closer, craning his neck to see—only she comes back with money instead of an exotic surprise. 18,000 won to be specific. He extends his hand and takes it, confused.  
  
‘What is this?’  
  
‘Someone bought your painting,’ she says, smiling. ‘A woman from out of town. She was very happy. She got a good deal’.  
  
Jiyong freezes for a moment and stares at the money in his hand. For a second, he can’t even process what she’s said. The last few days have been so busy. He has been preoccupied. He stopped thinking about the canvas he gave her, or the anxiety of knowing people would see it. He looks at the front of the table now and notices a few other paintings with prices in the corner. There is an empty space at the end. Is that where his canvas was?  
  
‘You’re joking’.  
  
‘I never joke’.  
  
‘You joke all the time!’  
  
She smiles sympathetically and gestures toward the money in his hand.  
  
‘Not about this. She enjoyed your painting. She was eager to take it. Congratulations,’ she says. ‘How do you feel?’  
  
He looks at the money again and puts it back on the table, stunned.  
  
‘I don’t need the money,’ he says, dazed. ‘But someone really bought it?’  
  
Seunghyun nudges him and Jiyong turns to find his eyebrows raised in eager surprise. He didn’t tell Seunghyun about the painting, but he seems to grasp the meaning behind selling something all the same. He squeezes his elbow and Jiyong reads the silent congratulations in it.   
  
As the seconds tick over, he feels the enormity of this little thing beginning to dawn on him. There has been a silent voice in his head for years telling him he couldn’t do this--- that if he shirked G-Dragon, that was it. He had no more left to give. No more creativity. No more outlet. Painting has been that outlet since Seoul--- a way of making art without any underlying motives or designs beyond that. Not to make money or to publicise himself, just for fun. Just to feel better. Just to make something. With this sale comes the awareness that branches exist—that things he enjoys can still lead into other things. That not all the doors are closed.  
  
If G-Dragon never comes back, if Kwon Jiyong is who re-enters the world years from now, refreshed and ready to be a creator again—maybe that’s okay. Maybe he can do that. In an instant, this small sale quells some of his fear. Someone bought something he made without knowing his identity. Right? He turns to Seunghyun and holds an accusatory finger up.  
  
‘Promise me you didn’t know about this. That you didn’t pay someone to buy my painting’.  
  
Seunghyun looks stunned and raises his hands in self-defence. He answers with his regular voice.  
  
‘What painting? I didn’t know about this!’  
  
Jiyong lowers his hand and turns back to Mrs Lee, speechless and grateful. She looks at him simultaneously like a proud grandmother, and a no-nonsense friend. In her face is both support and remonstrance to stop being so insecure. Get on with it.  
  
’18,000 won?’ he realises. ‘Why that amount?’  
  
‘It was what she had in her wallet. I asked for twenty’.  
  
Seunghyun laughs quietly and Jiyong nudges him. Maybe it’s fate. Of all the numbers to choose from. Hasn’t there always been something in them? It wasn’t something he decided on. It wasn’t self-made propaganda that these were his lucky numbers. They simply followed him around. Someone bought his painting for 18,000 won. It feels like a message from the universe. It happened by design.  
  


  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
  


The next morning starts a lot like the one before it. By the time Jiyong pulls a sweater on and drags his tired body downstairs, Seunghyun is already eating at the bench. His father stops him in the kitchen with his questions.  
  
‘Are these walls insulated? Nice and thick?’  
  
‘I guess so’.  
  
‘You don’t hear much in here? If one of you is upstairs and the other downstairs making noise, it’s still quiet?’  
  
‘Yes’.  
  
‘So you didn’t hear anything _unusual_ last night?’  
  
Jiyong stares at his father’s unreadable face and wonders what the fuck he’s talking about. Did he hear anything? Like what? Wild animals? Someone trying to break in? Seunghyun pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. He looks concerned, like he’s considering the possibilities too.  
  
‘You really didn’t hear any noises coming from down here?’ his father asks, voice hushed and serious.  
  
‘Like what?’  
  
In an instant, his father’s features change. A grin splits his face like he’s told a great joke and Jiyong is reminded of his mother days earlier asking about _safety_. Somehow, even half asleep, Jiyong knows _exactly_ what his father is intimating. His brash expression is all the evidence needed.  
  
_‘Oh no’._  
  
His father smiles in answer, raising his eyebrow in a sharp flick. He is proud of the nauseated reaction he’s elicited.  
  
‘Dad, no! In my _house?’_  
  
‘When a man and woman love each other, and the mood is right---’  
  
Jiyong drags his fingers down his face.  
  
‘Oh God’.  
  
At the counter, Seunghyun covers his face laughing. It is silent at first but quickly becomes loud. He laughs until there are tears in his eyes. Jiyong smacks him in the shoulder, peeved.    
  
‘Don’t encourage him!’  
  
He turns back to his father, dejected and resigned to this oversharing torture. His mother asked him about his sex life and that seemed like a nightmare. What is this confession by comparison? His parents had sex in his house? Surely there are rules against that. They couldn’t abstain for five days? Why is he learning about this at breakfast?  
  
‘Did you really?’ he asks his father. _‘Seriously?’_  
  
‘No, I’m just teasing’.  
  
Jiyong’s shoulders slump in relief but irritation flares. He has been awake for ten minutes. It is too early in the day for him to have any sense of humour.  
  
‘God, you’re the worst. You’re as bad as each other’.  
  
Aggrieved, he watches his father slap Seunghyun’s shoulder and make a comment about how easy it is to rile him.    
  
_‘How can you resist!’_  
  
Seunghyun agrees and they have a little chuckle about it.  
  
‘Oh, I get it,’ Jiyong says, folding his arms. ‘This is how you two will bond, right? Over my suffering?’ He points a finger at Seunghyun. ‘You’re in the doghouse’.  
  
Seunghyun smiles and stands, moving in for a consolatory hug but Jiyong rejects it, throwing his arm out.  
  
‘Actually, you can be in the hothouse,’ he says. ‘As in _right now_. Go outside and take him with you.’ He gestures towards his father. ‘You can’t annoy me this early in the morning. Go talk about plants or something. You’re both idiots’.  
  


  
  
*  
  
  


Jiyong bypasses breakfast. He doesn’t have the stomach for it anymore. Seven-thirty is too early to be harassed like this. Instead, he slumps down on the couch where his mother is sitting.  
  
‘Well,’ he says diplomatically. ‘Dad is doing better with all this than I expected’.  
  
As annoying as his father can be, he has been comfortable with Seunghyun. He has made jokes specifically to involve him. He has gone above and beyond. His heart is in the right place. Despite his tiredness and being flustered, Jiyong appreciates that beyond measure. This feels like a family—one that’s on shaky newborn legs, but a family all the same.  
  
‘He is,’ his mother says. ‘It was hard for him at first but he’s trying’.  
  
‘I was worried about him coming here’.  
  
‘So was I, but he loves you and he wanted to see you. He wants you to be happy’.  
  
Jiyong pulls his knees up onto the cushion and rests his head on the back of the couch.  
  
‘Thank-you,’ he says. Even with his mother’s constant reassurances in the days and weeks following his coming out, he still worried deep down that involving Seunghyun and physically mixing his two lives wouldn’t work. Isn’t it different finding out your son is seeing a man to actually _seeing_ it in person? But his parents have stepped up. They have made the last few days as comfortable as possible. ‘I’m grateful to you both,’ he says quietly. ‘I never thought I could have this’.  
  
‘We would never turn our backs on you,’ she says sympathetically. She holds his hand and he squeezes it.  
  
‘I know. But I kept a lot from you. You’ve both adjusted quicker than I expected. It means a lot to me that you’re here’.  
  
‘We’re happy to be’.  
  
‘Is Dami still coming tomorrow?’  
  
‘Around lunch time,’ she says. ‘Is there no-one else you want to invite while there’s still time?’  
  
‘No’.  
  
His answer is succinct. In the past, he enjoyed big birthdays. He had a wide circle of friends but he could never communicate with most one-on-one. Many of them were friends he only loved in group settings, so birthdays were a chance to get together. In a crowd, he thrived. Big birthdays were always a good time. This year, he wants something different.  
  
‘I don’t want to hide Seunghyun. I never get to spend my birthday with him _and_ other people, I’m excited to have us together’.  
  
‘Have you thought about telling anyone else about him? Youngbae?’  
  
‘No’.  
  
‘You think he’ll disapprove?’  
  
Jiyong withdraws his hand from his mother’s grasp and slides it beneath his head.  
  
‘It’s not that. I think if it were anyone else, or if I was dating a man he didn’t know? He would adjust and be happy for me. He would get used to it’.  
  
‘But not Seunghyun?’  
  
‘Maybe not’.  
  
‘Why not?’  
  
Jiyong frowns. Verbalising these wordless feelings that have been swirling in his gut for years is difficult. When he says them aloud, they feel disingenuous. He feels guilty for thinking so—but the feeling remains. It’s complicated.  
  
‘Youngbae is my best friend,’ he says, thinking. ‘I still call him at leasts twice a week. We’ve been a pair for a long time. For years, you couldn’t have one of us without the other’.  
  
‘I know’.  
  
Jiyong shifts his position now, like the words are making him physically uncomfortable. But he says them anyway. Maybe she can help him make sense of it. To discern fact from fiction. Insecurity from reality.  
  
‘When Seunghyun became a big part of my life,’ Jiyong says, ‘back in the early days of Big Bang, when he and I started spending more time together. When we figured out that we had things in common separate from the others, like clubbing and the people we hung out with, and the music we listened to--- Youngbae was jealous. I don’t think he realised, but I knew him well enough to see it bothered him. He and I were always so close, we were inseparable. I think it upset him to see me close with someone else’.  
  
‘That’s understandable’.  
  
‘Yeah, but the more Seunghyun and I hung out, the more I noticed these looks Youngbae would give me, like he was disappointed or he just didn’t get it,’ Jiyong says. ‘When Seunghyun and I were making our album together, Youngbae struggled. He never said anything but I could _tell,_ and I understood it. He and I were always supposed to do music together. We were supposed to be a team, but I was fulfilling that dream with somebody else, and not only that, I was having the time of my life. That year we were making that record? Promoting it? That was one of the best years of my life. I had never had so much fun, and Youngbae knew that. It made him sad that he wasn’t a part of it’.  
  
‘But he’s always supported you both’.  
  
‘I know,’ Jiyong says. ‘And that’s what sucks. Even when he felt those things, even when I could read him like a book, he still had a smile on his face. He was happy for us when we did well. He was always singing our songs. He was great. He was the perfect friend. But it hurt him anyway. He was such a good friend that he never said anything to me. He just suffered in silence and I couldn’t fix it because what could I do? I knew I was kind of myopic sometimes, but I didn’t fix it. I let him be a third wheel’.  
  
‘You never talked to him about it?’  
  
‘No. What could I say? You’re still my best friend, I just have a new friend now? I tried to show him. Still, he was always funny about it. Whenever me and Seunghyun would laugh together, I’d catch him staring from the corner of my eye. He just didn’t fit with us. He couldn’t make himself fit into what we were. Who I was with Youngbae and who I was with Seunghyun were like different people’.  
  
‘You don’t think he’d approve of your relationship if you told him now?’  
  
‘Of Seunghyun and I?’ Jiyong asks, pained. ‘I don’t know. I’ve known him a long time and my gut is telling me not to say anything. Not yet. It was different when I told you and Dad. You’re my parents. Deep down I thought you _had_ to accept me eventually, even if you couldn’t at first. You would have to come around sooner or later because you’re my blood. I thought that and was _still_ scared to tell you. Youngbae is my blood too, but he’s not. He’s family but he isn’t. I know he loves me and I know he would try, but I know it would eat away at him too. It would really kill him to know. It would bring up all those old feelings’.  
  
Jiyong rolls his head across the back of the couch and sighs. It isn’t that he thinks Youngbae would toss away their friendship or hate him for it. The disappointment would manifest in other ways and he isn’t ready for that. He doesn’t want their friendship to change. Not even a little. Youngbae is too important to him to risk it--- to alter their relationship in any way. And what about Seunghyun? Youngbae and Seunghyun have a relationship that he doesn’t understand—that he isn’t a part of. He can’t imagine the unintended repercussions of telling Youngbae the truth. So many things would change.  
  
‘I love him,’ Jiyong says honestly. ‘And he loves me, and he loves Seunghyun. He would do his best for us. He would support it once he understood, but things would change. I don’t want that. Not yet. It’s enough for me that you guys know, and that Dami knows’.  
  
‘Well, you don’t have to tell anybody until you’re ready’.  
  
‘I know’.  
  


  
  
* * *

 

 

 

  
All in all, the week goes quickly and smoothly. He has real conversations with his mother and he jokes with his dad and they are both so open with Seunghyun, it warms him. He doesn’t feel the need to mediate between them. He leaves them alone together and doesn’t worry about it. He never returns to an awkward scene.  
  
One afternoon, he comes down the stairs and hears Seunghyun talking to his mother. She has obviously probed him about their relationship, because he finds himself sitting on the bottom step out of sight, listening to Seunghyun tell _his_ side of the story. Their first kiss. How they got together. Things Seunghyun has already told him in tender moments—but he finds his eyes stinging at the easy way Seunghyun relates them to his mother. He is not embarrassed or ashamed by this new and difficult situation. For anyone, meeting family can be a stressful thing but he has weathered it better than Jiyong expected. Maybe two decades of connection have helped eased the way, but even then---  
  
Things become so natural and easy, he is disappointed when his birthday actually arrives because it augurs the end of their stay. It is his last night to enjoy this strange new world. Dami will come and for a few precious hours, he will have his whole family together in one place. But then? He worries about missing them— about missing this feeling of fullness.  
  


  
  
*  


  
  
So, it’s his birthday at last. He is thirty-four years old. It’s hard to reconcile. In the back of his head he sometimes feels twenty-three. Looking back on the past fifteen years, parts seem like a dream; others, like he is remembering someone else’s life. Seunghyun pulls a muscle in bed while laying completely stationary and that reminds him that they’re not vibrant youth anymore. Seunghyun groans a pained _Happy Birthday_ at six in the morning while Jiyong massages a painful knot out of his calf.  
  
At breakfast, his parents wish him a happy birthday but the day itself is sedate. There are no presents or cake until dinner, so it is a day like any other. When Dami finally arrives, she throws her arms around him and suffocates him with her steel-gripped hug. When he’s had enough, she shifts her attention to Seunghyun and they talk shit about him, like real family.  
  
‘He never calls me,’ Dami chides. ‘He barely answers my texts. Look at this last one he sent me. It’s just a thumbs up’.  
  
‘Don’t get me started,’ Seunghyun says.  
  


  
  
*  
  
  


At dinner, they eat and talk. Lights are dimmed. A cake comes out. They sing a garbled rendition of Happy Birthday and Jiyong raises a glass. Dami pushes him to give a speech but he shrugs, chin in his hand.  
  
‘I don’t have anything to say except thank-you for coming. I love you all. This has been a nice birthday’.  
  
When the gifts start coming, they are sentimental. He asked them not to bring anything, but they do anyway. They skirt the prohibition by calling them housewarming gifts. His parents give him a little pot of daisies. Dami gives him a garish traditional mask, but she gives it sincerely.  
  
‘It’s good luck hanging one in the house. It means you’ll have good fortune and a happy home’.  
  
With tangible peer pressure from the entire table, Seunghyun admits that he has a gift too.  
  
‘I was going to give it to you later’.  
  
It takes his parents joining in on some goading peer pressure for Seunghyun to go upstairs for it. When he comes back down, he has a small, carefully wrapped box in his hands. On the table, Jiyong runs his fingers over the black ribbon. Whatever it is, the gift is small. The size of a book maybe.  
  
When he takes the lid off the box, he isn’t sure what he’s looking at. It’s a small photo frame with a torn piece of paper in its centre. It is floating in the middle of the glass. He pulls the frame out of the box and takes a closer look--- the paper has handwriting on it in a scrawl so messy, it takes time for him to recognise it. He recognises the numbers anyway.  
  
‘A receipt?’  
  
‘For the painting you sold’.  
  
Jiyong stares at him intently for a moment.  
  
‘How did you get it?’  
  
‘I asked your ajumma friend for it. I thought it would be nice for you to have'.  
  
Jiyong is stunned. It has only been two days. He doesn’t know where Seunghyun found the time to get this, he has been so busy with work. Maybe, it was that day at the market. He said he had a craving for fish and disappeared. He did come back with some—but he was gone a long time.  
  
Jiyong doesn’t know how to react. How can Seunghyun know what the sale of that painting meant to him? They didn’t talk about it afterwards. That day at the market, he was too stunned. He had too much to think about. His parents were a distraction. But Seunghyun got this receipt anyway? How? He knew enough to think this was an important memento. Something meaningful--- because it _is_ that. Jiyong looks at this receipt and feels such a mix of emotions. He has barely had time to process his sold painting. Busy and distracted since his parent's arrival, his mind has been on other things. Now, it really hits him. Not thoughts, but feelings. This receipt gives him a hopeful feeling that isn’t fully formed yet.  
  
Jiyong looks at him, and on Seunghyun’s face is real sympathy and understanding. Somehow, without speaking, he knows the whole of it already. Those few minutes at the market were enough for him to _get it._ Enough for him to know the sale itself was immaterial but it represented something. It _proved_ something. It made him feel better about the unknowns in the future.  
  
His throat tightens. It is a beautiful and sentimental gift. He wishes Seunghyun had given this to him in private like he intended. He doesn’t want to get emotional in front of his parents. He doesn’t want to kiss Seunghyun in front of them or touch the back of his neck or look at him too lovingly. Yes, his mother knows that they fuck but making her _see_ the more intimate side of their relationship is something he wanted to introduce slowly.  
  
Seunghyun sees his reticence but ignores it. He turns to him and talks with his head in his hand, his posture relaxed over the corner of the table. Jiyong is already rapt.  
  
‘I’m proud of you,’ Seunghyun says. ‘I know what it meant to you that someone bought your painting. I thought this could be a reminder’.  
  
He is so sincere, and his smile so loving—Jiyong slumps. It doesn’t make any sense to him. How he can love one person so much and for so long? How can he look at Seunghyun now and be so bursting with love for him that he could fold under the weight of it? They have been together for so long, they should be tired of each other.  
  
‘I’ll give you the big speech later,’ Seunghyun says. ‘But for now, Happy Birthday. I love you’.  
  
His sister coos and urges them to kiss. His parents smile mutedly at the suggestion. Jiyong wants to give them a reprieve and decline, but he doesn’t. It’s a spontaneous choice. He is touched by the gift. He is touched by Seunghyun’s intuition. _Fuck it!_ He kisses Seunghyun. He keeps the kiss chaste, but his heart pounds. To be affectionate with Seunghyun in front of his parents, not just teasing him or cracking jokes, or touching him in innocuous ways, is nice. It isn’t something he wants to do again and again, or to rub in their face, but maybe it’s okay to introduce it now. He wants to normalise it. He doesn’t want to make his parents uncomfortable, but he wants them to understand that two single beds and a pair of held hands is a fantasy. If he doesn’t do it now, maybe he will always put it off. So, he kisses him. When they separate he whispers a quiet but audible _I love you._  
  


 

  
*  


 

  
  
For hours, they all drink and talk, laugh and get along. It’s simple but having the people he loves in one place at one time, affords him a perfect birthday. He doesn’t want it to end, but he knows he is pushing his luck. The longer they are together, the more opportunity there is for something to go wrong. So, their last night together comes to a quiet close. He says goodnight to everyone in turn as they each go to bed.  
  
He potters around for a while, cleaning up. He blows out candles and folds the used wrapping paper, saving it to repurpose another time. He turns the kitchen lights off and turns the dishwasher on. He does his usual, unthinking routine. Then, he turns to find himself alone with his father.  
  
‘Oh, I thought you went to bed’.  
  
‘I wanted to say goodnight in private,’ his father says. He is reserved and sheepish, and not like himself at all. Jiyong approaches him without a thought.  
  
‘Everything okay?’  
  
His father nods, but his eyes are on the ground and his lips are pursed, like he has something difficult to say. After such an easy and relaxing evening, Jiyong worries. It can’t have anything to do with Seunghyun. His father was too warm at dinner, and throughout the week for him to reveal any negativity now.  
  
For a moment, tired and a little drunk, Jiyong starts thinking about illnesses. he thinks about his father looking constipated suddenly because he has cancer. That this entire trip was a convenient way of spending time with him before he _dies_. Now, he’s going to come clean. It’s completely insane, but stupid things pop into your head late at night.  
  
He is caught off guard when his father pulls him into a forceful hug instead. It almost knocks the wind out of him. It is so masculine and rough. His father holds him against his chest and pats his back so hard that Jiyong flinches from it--- and it lingers. It lasts. His father hugs him, in a way he hasn’t done in a long long time.  
  
It takes time for Jiyong to understand what this is. That this is his father’s way of saying the unsaid things while he still has time. He is simply saying _I love you, it’s all good_ —in an awkward way. Because he finds it difficult to have that conversation.  
  
Jiyong is touched by it. When he comes to his senses, he hugs him back. His father talks into his ear and Jiyong feels it in his gut. When they have separated and his father has gone to bed without alluding to what just happened _at all_ , Jiyong goes upstairs and replays it in his mind. It means more to him than he expected.  
  
‘You’re doing good. I'm pleased for you'.  
  
_‘Thank-you’._

 

 

 

*

  
  
  
In the bedroom, Seunghyun crawls into bed behind him and Jiyong leans his framed receipt against a vase on the dresser.  
  
‘I might leave it here. Is that okay?’  
  
‘And think good thoughts about me whenever you look at it?’ Seunghyun asks. ‘That’s fine with me’.  
  
Jiyong scoffs and gets into bed with him, smiling into a kiss. He folds his arm around Seunghyun’s middle and savours the feel of him. His warmth. His smell. The last few days have been a blur. They haven’t had the chance to fall asleep together.  
  
‘I’m ready for my speech now. I was promised one at dinner’.  
  
‘I was just saying that to impress your parents. Always leave the audience wanting more’.  
  
‘No, you always have a speech,’ Jiyong answers tenderly. ‘Every year. Give it to me’.  
  
Seunghyun sighs light-heartedly and pulls him in closer until their faces are inches apart. He takes his time starting, and the build-up makes Jiyong love him more, because he knows Seunghyun wants to say something important. He always does. Every birthday since they first said _I love you_ , he has said something--- some important message that has been forgotten in the busyness of everyday life.  
  
‘I know,’ Seunghyun says tentatively, ‘that in the back of your head, there’s a voice always asking what you’ll do if you can’t go back. If you never _want_ to.’  
  
Jiyong knows without explanation that Seunghyun means life before this. He means Seoul. A big three company. Mega-stardom. They haven’t talked about this, but Seunghyun knows it anyway. There _is_ a voice and there has been since they came here.  
  
He is _happy_ here. Inje has been a dream. It has cemented their relationship. He knows now, that he and Seunghyun can be together without distraction or outside pressure. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, they still love each other and get along. Being here reinforces that home is people, not place. He can make a home wherever Seunghyun is, and Seunghyun feels the same way. Inje has been good in that way, and others. He no longer feels like he’s standing on a ledge. His irregular heartbeat is gone. He is weaning off his antidepressants. His sleeping pills are in the bottom of an unused drawer. Life as Kwon Jiyong has been a reprieve. He can _breathe._ He is enjoying this life--- but he is G-Dragon still. He tells himself that Inje is ultimately temporary. That being here is a protracted break. Eventually, he will go back and that other life will resume.  
  
But what if it doesn’t? What if, when the time comes, he doesn’t want it to? What then? If he never goes back, what happens? What will he do with his life? He has always been in the spotlight. He has always lived in a tightening vice. He has always lived with pain. That’s what he knows.  
  
He doesn’t want to become indolent or idle. He doesn’t want to reach a point where he can’t tell the difference between a break and giving up. He has spent his life driving forward, always onwards and upwards. Always chasing something. Always wanting to be better. Now, the drive is winding down. He worries about what that means. Rationally, he tells himself it’s okay. He’s tired. He’s getting older. Priorities change. Irrationally, he agonises about the future. He sweats over the idea of becoming a stale, broken relic.  
  
He’s thought all of these things and suppressed them; shoving them down so deep that they can’t be identified. But Seunghyun has recognised them anyway.  
  
‘And what if I don’t go back?’ Jiyong asks him. ‘What happens? If I do and it takes ten, twenty years? What then?’  
  
‘There are infinite possibilities out there,’ Seunghyun answers. ‘Whether you go back or not, it doesn’t matter. You’ll survive. You’ll be okay’.  
  
‘I don’t want to retire at thirty-four’.  
  
‘You’re not,’ Seunghyun says emphatically. ‘This is a break. Us being here? It’s breathing room. You can’t worry about the future _already_. We haven’t even been here four months. Relax’.  
  
‘Easier said than done’.  
  
Jiyong’s eyelids flutter as Seunghyun tucks some hair behind his ear. It’s a sympathetic gesture.  
  
‘I will support you in anything,’ Seunghyun says. ‘I will always have your back, Jiyong. So, listen to me when I say: you are talented. You are an artist. You can do anything you want with the rest of your life. Don’t be afraid of the future. Just be here. You have earned this time. You have earned this chance to be happy,’ he says. ‘And you are happy. I see such a difference in you. You don’t know how much happier I am every day seeing _you_ happy. I knew Seoul was getting bad but I didn’t know how much until we came here. I feel like a different person here and I know whatever I feel, you do too’.  
  
Jiyong frowns for a moment and puts his hand over Seunghyun’s, still lingering behind his ear.  
  
‘And if you’re happy, what’s the problem?’ Seunghyun asks. ‘There’s a part of you that’s used to stress and suffering. You think it’s noble or professional to be self-effacing and self-sacrificing, but it’s not. We’re in our mid-thirties. When does it become our time? When have we done enough?’  
  
Jiyong knows Seunghyun is right. But how do you break old habits? They had to work so hard to reach the top. It became ingrained. Once you reach the top, you have to work twice as hard to maintain it. It becomes an addiction. The pressure is crushing. Rationality disappears. When areas flag, it becomes personal. A song doesn’t do as well as you hoped. You don’t win the award. You don’t chart as long as you used to. Your views go down. With every slip, self-worth goes with it. It’s hard to take a step back. It’s hard to think clearly.  
  
Inje has helped him divorce himself from that. Putting his phone away and staying off the internet has been a necessity. But even now, he knows how easily he can be sucked back in. He hasn’t for one second really entertained going back, but the voice is there. Some days, it makes him restless and he bounces off the walls. Other days, he knows better. What will fix that? Time?  
  
‘I would go down any rabbit hole with you,’ Seunghyun says. ‘I would go to Seoul with you. I would go to Antarctica with you. Whatever you want. Whatever will make you happy,’ he says. ‘But I won’t let you make dumb decisions because you think you _ought_ to be doing something’.  
  
Jiyong grimaces at his knowing accuracy, but he’s touched at the sentiment.  
  
‘You sold a painting this week that didn’t have your name on it. I get that,’ Seunghyun says. ‘That meant something. I know you don’t paint for recognition or money, but I want that receipt to be a reminder. You can do anything. You don’t have to make choices that will hurt you,’ he says, having seen the way the last few years eroded him. Staying, because he felt obligated. Staying because he didn’t know how to get out. ‘You can be happy,’ Seunghyun assures him. ‘For the rest of your life, we can find those good options for you. You can be fulfilled and not want to kill yourself at the same time. I’ll help you. I’ll be here’.  
  
And that’s the crux of it. This year’s birthday speech--- nipping something in the bud that had barely begun to grow. Seunghyun knows him so well. He can read him so well--- that the slightest deviation, the smallest unwelcome thought gets noticed. Here he is saying he won’t let it get bigger. He is paying attention.  
  
‘Thank-you,’ Jiyong whispers.  
  
He kisses Seunghyun briefly, unable to say more. Some things don’t need to be said. Seunghyun knows how he feels, so a kiss is enough. It shows enough. It shows his gratitude for Seunghyun’s unflagging support. His gratitude that Seunghyun is willing to butt heads with him and talk him down from bad decisions. His gratitude that Seunghyun knows him well enough to anticipate them.  
  
‘It was sad,’ Seunghyun says, ‘seeing the shock on your face when your ajumma handed you that money. You were so relieved. It’s like you thought you would never be able to create things again. That hanging G-Dragon up meant your life was over--- and that’s bullshit,’ Seunghyun says lightly. ‘ _Such_ bullshit. Every time you look at my _very good_ gift up there on the dresser, I want you to check your reflection in the glass and remember how fucking dumb you were for thinking that’.  
  
Jiyong smiles.  
  
‘Thank-you, asshole’.  
  
‘You’re welcome’.  
  
Seunghyun looks over him suddenly, at the clock on the bedside table.  
  
‘Shit. You’ve only got two minutes of birthday left. Any suggestions?’  
  
‘That’s not enough time to do anything’.  
  
‘It’s enough time for _some_ things’.  
   
‘Two minutes? We really are getting old’.  
  
‘No,’ Seunghyun laughs. ‘I meant I have a second gift for you. Very closely tied to the first’.  
  
‘Another receipt?’  
  
‘No’.  
  
Seunghyun rolls up invisible sleeves in anticipation. He has a smug look on his face all of a sudden and Jiyong shoves his shoulder prematurely, knowing he’s done _something._ He looks too self-satisfied.  
  
‘What did you _do?’_  
  
‘Lick your lips and get ready to crawl under these sheets for me,’ Seunghyun jests, tapping his crotch. ‘Because when I tell you, you’ll be so grateful that---’ they both laugh before he can finish his sentence.  
  
‘It must be good if I’m blowing you on _my_ birthday’.  
  
‘It’s only your birthday for another minute. I’ve timed this perfectly,’ Seunghyun says.  
  
Jiyong laughs and Seunghyun kisses him before dropping his big surprise.  
  
‘I got your old lady friend to take your money’.  
  
_‘What?’_  
  
Jiyong shoves Seunghyun’s shoulder.  
  
‘What do you mean?’  
  
‘I talked to her when I got that receipt,’ Seunghyun says. ‘I don’t want to tell you my secret methods of persuasion, because I use them on you too. But she caved. She said you can buy her a new roof—as long as it’s plain. Don’t go crazy’.  
  
Jiyong is stunned. He waits for the joke, but there isn’t one. Relief washes over him. It startles him, how happy this news makes him. Two weeks of pent up stress thinking about Mrs Lee’s situation and his inability to fix it has been chipping away at his calm. And maybe that’s crazy, because he barely knows her. But at the same time, he knows their friendship will continue. For as long as he lives in Inje—he feels that future friendship extending out behind him. It feels like they’ve been friends for years already. He has found some weird but meaningful connection with her. Maybe she is a surrogate grandmother, or a placeholder for his family who are now further away. It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t make it less real.  
  
‘How did you do it? Tell me’.  
  
‘I told you, I can’t reveal my secrets’.  
  
_‘Seunghyun’._  
  
‘I just talked to her! I’m not telling you what I said. I pled your case, that’s all. I was very convincing. The rest is fiancé-ajumma privilege. I can’t say’.  
  
Jiyong groans. He is frustrated not to know, but at least it’s done. He is so grateful to Seunghyun for this. He doesn’t know how he did it. He tried to convince her a dozen times over but was always rebuffed. Seunghyun tries and on the first go, she agrees?  
  
‘You’re unbelievable’.  
  
‘I _know,_ ’ Seunghyun answers proudly. ‘I _nailed_ your birthday presents this year and it didn’t cost me a thing’.  
  
Jiyong kisses him with a smile.  
  
‘Frugality _and_ creativity. God, that’s sexy’.  
  
‘It’s not your birthday anymore. You want to thank me?’  
  
He pulls the sheet back as a suggestion and Jiyong snorts.  
  
‘My whole family is downstairs. Even if they weren’t, you’d be sucking _my_ dick. It’s my birthday until we go to sleep. Those are birthday rules’.  
  
Seunghyun pulls the sheet back, folding Jiyong into his arms.  
  
‘Alright. I owe you one. On Wednesday, when I won’t be so tired from work’.  
  
Jiyong laughs. Their life in Seoul was often so busy, sex and intimacy were squeezed into whatever time they had. If they both had a day or an hour free in the middle of a busy schedule, they implicitly understood that sex was probably on the table. They needed that physical connection to stay sane. Here, things are more relaxed. Some weeks they don’t have sex at all—others, multiple times. Sometimes, they plan it in advance.  
  
Jiyong kisses Seunghyun one last time, shuffling down under the blankets and wriggling around until he is comfortable. With his parents visit mostly over and successful, and the niggling irritation of Mrs Lee’s roof lifted--- he is more content than ever. He closes his eyes with his head on Seunghyun’s arm and an ankle hooked around him.  
  
‘We really are getting older’.  
  
‘I know. But I’m enjoying it’.  
  
‘Me too’.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm sorry this was disjointed. So many scenes were missing and there wasn't a proper ending, but I just can't string words together this past month, so left it all undone so i could de-stress xoxox


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